@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@ Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society Club Notice - 04/02/93 -- Vol. 11, No. 40 MEETINGS UPCOMING: Unless otherwise stated, all meetings are in Holmdel 4N-509 Wednesdays at noon. _D_A_T_E _T_O_P_I_C 04/21 ARISTOI by Walter Jon Williams (If This--AI, Virtual Reality, Nanotech--Goes On) 05/12 THOMAS THE RHYMER by Ellen Kushner (Fantasy in a Modern Vein) 06/02 WORLD AT THE END OF TIME by Frederik Pohl (Modern Stapledonian Fiction) 06/23 CONSIDER PHLEBAS by Iain Banks (Space Opera with a Knife Twist) 07/14 SIGHT OF PROTEUS by Charles Sheffield (Human Metamorphosis) Outside events: The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County meets on the second Saturday of every month in Upper Saddle River; call 201-933-2724 for details. The New Jersey Science Fiction Society meets on the third Saturday of every month in Belleville; call 201-432-5965 for details. HO Chair: John Jetzt HO 1E-525 908-834-1563 holly!jetzt LZ Chair: Rob Mitchell HO 1C-523 908-834-1267 holly!jrrt MT Chair: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper HO Librarian: Nick Sauer HO 4F-427 908-949-7076 homxc!11366ns LZ Librarian: Lance Larsen LZ 3L-312 908-576-3346 quartet!lfl MT Librarian: Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 mtgzfs3!leeper Factotum: Evelyn Leeper MT 1F-329 908-957-2070 mtgpfs1!ecl All material copyright by author unless otherwise noted. 1. I recently wrote about some of the dilemmas being faced because somebody in the local town of Marlboro claims to have seen and continues to see the Virgin Mary appearing in his backyard. There actually is more to write on that story, with billboards springing up all over declaring that you can call an 800-number to find out what Mary has to say. I may follow up on this in a future issue. Normally Jews just sort of sit back and half-smile at some of the strange manifestations of other religions around them. By and large Judaism tends to avoid this sort of thing and remain fairly THE MT VOID Page 2 stable and unaffected by the passage of time. Big events in Judaism tend to be changes in philosophy that can be argued by scholars. One group will suddenly declare that you do not have to believe in God to be Jewish and other branches will go back and look in their books and try to find arguments that you really do have to be a believer to be Jewish. This is all done with relatively little in the way of hard feeling or fanaticism. 1993 is shaping up to be as weird a year in Judaism as it is in some other religions. The smaller of two weirdnesses that have come to my attention is a new service where you _f_a_x a message to God. There is one group in Jerusalem who will accept messages faxed to them and place them in the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Placing written messages in the Wall has for many years been considered by some to be a special channel. Now for the price of the phone call, you can send your message direct to God. Of course, if you believe in placing messages in the Wall, you probably also believe in prayer which is probably just as effective, cheaper, and does not require special equipment, and nobody has to come along and remove you prayer to make room for others. The really weird news is that a small subset of Jews in New York, the Lubavitch Jews, have decided that their rabbi is so great, he is at last the Messiah. Rabbit Menachem Schneerson does not appear to have ever made this claim of himself and is now too old and sick to say one way or the other, but his followers are taking ads in newspapers declaring him to be. Outside the Lubavitch Jews this announcement is being met with ... well, extreme skepticism would be putting it mildly. But it will be of some interest to see if somebody is going to write an alternate and Newer Testament about Schneerson. Who would write it? Will they start to celebrate his birthday with a holiday? The whole concept is a little weird. Anyway, that is just my opinion. 2. Congratulations to librarian Nick Sauer on the birth of his daughter Alia (sp?) on March 19. [-ecl] 3. Overheard at the last meeting, in reference to being a popular author but never winning a Hugo: "Vernor Vinge is the Al Pacino of science fiction." [-ecl] Mark Leeper MT 3D-441 908-957-5619 ...mtgzfs3!leeper Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting. -- George Orwell Boskone 30 (Part 3 of 3) Con report by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1993 Evelyn C. Leeper Comedy in SF and Fantasy Sunday, 11 AM Connie Willis (mod), Bradley Denton, Esther Friesner, Craig Shaw Gardner, Laura Ann Gilman, Jeff Hecht The first thing I learned from this panel is that it is impossible to convey a humorous panel in print, but this will be my humble attempt. One of the first questions after everyone on the panel mentioned their latest or funniest books was what people answer when asked, "Why do you write funny fantasy?" Friesner said she does it to aggravate people who ask. Someone once read something of hers and said, "You're not from this planet." She wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a compliment or not. The question, "Why do you write funny fantasy?" seems odd; did people ask P. G. Wodehouse why he wrote humor? On the other hand, Woody Allen said, "If you write comedy, you are not sitting at the adult table." Someone asked if the panelists enjoyed writing humor, because most writers seem to say they hate writing in general. Willis responded, "I loathe and despise every moment of my writing career. I hate writing." The panelists felt that writing comedy is _t_e_c_h_n_i_c_a_l_l_y much more difficult than writing a serious book, especially these days with what someone called the "That's not funny" generation. (Political correctness seemed to be a running thread through the convention.) On the other hand, some people felt that political correctness was a boon. Denton announced that his new novel _B_l_a_c_k_b_u_r_n has been objected to on moral grounds, so he's hoping sales will skyrocket! And Willis said, "I am pleased beyond measure to do irreparable harm to the radical feminist movement." Denton talked about reading a section of a work of his in which one of the male protagonist's gets shot, first in the crotch and then in the eye. After the first shot, the audience laughed, but after the second there was a shocked silence, after which Denton concluded that "the difference between comedy and tragedy is getting shot in the balls or shot in the eye." As far as _v_e_r_b_o_t_e_n topics for humor, Friesner felt that harm to children was out. Hecht said that he wouldn't write anything that would cause pain to someone he knew. No panel on comedy in science fiction and fantasy would be complete without recommendations, so here they are: the "Burke Breathed" cartoons, the works of L. Frank Baum, various works by Boskone 30 March 11, 1993 Page 2 Frederic Brown, _S_t_a_l_k_i_n_g _t_h_e _A_n_g_e_l by Robert Crais (Bantam, 1992, $4.99), _T_h_e _I_n_c_o_m_p_l_e_t_e _E_n_c_h_a_n_t_e_r by L. Sprague deCamp, "The Santa Claus Compromise" by Thomas M. Disch (in Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss's _B_e_s_t _S_F: _1_9_7_5), "Melpomene, Calliope ... and Fred" by Nicholas V. Yermakov (someone said this was George Alec Effinger, but I'm not sure that's correct) (available in Arthur Saha's _Y_e_a_r'_s _B_e_s_t _F_a_n_t_a_s_y _S_t_o_r_i_e_s: _7), the "Cathy" cartoons by Cathy Guisewite, "Stable Strategies for Middle Management" by Eileen Gunn, the "Stainless Steel Rat" series by Harry Harrison, _E_x_p_e_c_t_i_n_g _S_o_m_e_o_n_e _T_a_l_l_e_r and _W_h_o'_s _A_f_r_a_i_d _o_f _B_e_o_w_u_l_f? (Ace, 1990, $4.50; Ace, 1991, $4.50) by Tom Holt, _T_h_r_e_e _M_e_n _i_n _a _B_o_a_t by Jerome K. Jerome (Penguin, 1978, $5.95), the "Pogo" strips by Walt Kelly, _B_l_u_e _H_e_a_v_e_n and _P_u_t_t_i_n_g _o_n _t_h_e _R_i_t_z by Joe Keenan (Penguin, 1988, $7.95; Penguin, 1992, $10), _A_p_p_a_r_e_n_t _W_i_n_d by Dallas Murphy (Pocket Books, 1991, $4.99), various works of Lewis Padgett, _D_i_e _f_o_r _L_o_v_e and _N_a_k_e_d _O_n_c_e _M_o_r_e (Tor, 1991, $3.99; Warner, 1990, $4.95) by Elizabeth Peters, "Mail Supremacy" by Hayford Peirce (available in Isaac Asimov and Martin Greenberg's _1_0_0 _S_h_o_r_t _S_h_o_r_t _S_F _S_t_o_r_i_e_s, _G_o_o_d _O_m_e_n_s by Neil Gaiman (this was mentioned by someone who recommended all of Terry Pratchett's works and then mentioned this specifically, forgetting this wasn't written by Pratchett) (Berkley, 1992, $8.95) various works by Richard Rankin, the "Samurai Cat" works by Mark E. Rogers, various works by Thorne Smith, the "Aquiliad" series by Somtow Sucharitkul (a.k.a. S. M. Somtow), almost anything by Howard Waldrop, and _C_o_s_m_i_c _B_a_n_d_i_t_o_s by A. C. Weisbecker (Vintage, 1986, $5.95). (Making this list makes me wonder if all these recommendations that people make on panels are actually used by anyone. If I hadn't been trying to take notes for a convention report, I wouldn't be able to tell you what was recommended. I suppose it's possible that seeing one of the mentioned books in a store, I might recall that I had heard something about it, but possibly not even whether it was a recommendation or a warning.) Kaffeeklatsch Sunday, noon Connie Willis First off, everyone congratulated Willis on her two Nebula nominations (for _D_o_o_m_s_d_a_y _B_o_o_k and "Even the Queen"). I asked her about a comment she had made earlier about people telling her she had to get off the fence. This fence was not the fence between humor and serious writing, but the fence between the Left and the Right (for lack of better terms). People kept saying she had to take sides, but Willis says, "No!" Women keep telling her about her "responsibility to her sisters," but Willis says her responsibility is to the truth, and that anyway, she thought women's liberation meant that she could have the freedom to write about what she wanted to write about. She mentioned she had written an Boskone 30 March 11, 1993 Page 3 editorial for the October 1992 issue of _I_s_a_a_c _A_s_i_m_o_v'_s _S_c_i_e_n_c_e _F_i_c_t_i_o_n in response to the attitude that there were no women writing science fiction until Ursula LeGuin and Joanna Russ "stormed the barricades." In the editorial, Willis talked about how there have always been women writing science fiction, and how many of them were major influences on her. She also said that the major influence on her was probably Robert Heinlein's juveniles, and that any science fiction writer who claims otherwise is probably trying to be politically correct rather than honest. Most of the authors she mentioned are out of print now (because of the Thor Power Tool tax ruling making keeping backlist books too expensive; one can hope that electronic libraries will help get around this problem). Two recent works which have influenced her writing are D'Souza's _I_l_l_i_b_e_r_a_l _E_d_u_c_a_t_i_o_n: _T_h_e _P_o_l_i_t_i_c_s _o_f _R_a_c_e & _S_e_x _o_n _C_a_m_p_u_s (Random House, 1992, 300pp, $12) and Wendy Kaminer's _I'_m _D_y_s_f_u_n_c_t_i_o_n_a_l, _Y_o_u'_r_e _D_y_s_f_u_n_c_t_i_o_n_a_l: _T_h_e _R_e_c_o_v_e_r_y _M_o_v_e_m_e_n_t & _O_t_h_e_r _S_e_l_f-_H_e_l_p _F_a_s_h_i_o_n_s (Addison-Wesley, 1992, 176pp, $18.22). A work that influenced _D_o_o_m_s_d_a_y _B_o_o_k in particular was Katherine Anne Porter's "Pale Horse, Pale Rider," a story set in the 1918 influenza plague. A personal influence on Willis's work was something that happened to her when she was about ten. Her mother dropped off her and her younger sister at the movies before going shopping, saying that when they got out they should wait right in front of the movie until 4 PM, when she would come pick them up. Something happened-- her sister fell and hit her head or something--and her sister started crying loudly, and Willis didn't know what to do, so she looked at the clock and saw it was 3:30. Figuring her mother would be along soon, she took her sister outside and waited a while. Then she looked at the clock (through the door) again, and realized she had read the clock wrong before and it was only 2:30 (or maybe even earlier--I didn't write down all the details). She knew they couldn't go back in, but she had a dime, so she went to a phone and tried calling home in case her father was there. But her grandfather, who was somewhat senile, answered the phone and then hung up. Now she had no money and no idea what to do. Just as she was about to panic completely, her father came down the street. It seems he had been home in the yard and heard the phone ring, but couldn't get to it before her grandfather answered and hung up. Still, he thought that _m_a_y_b_e it was Willis calling because she was in trouble and just in case, he decided to go to the theater and check. Willis said that the feeling of relief she felt when she saw him coming was something she would never forget, and this incident can be seen in many of her works, she says, in the themes of rescue and of decision-making from insufficient information. I also see a parallel in the adolescent girl in _D_o_o_m_s_d_a_y _B_o_o_k who must act as an adult. (Note: her father asked the ticket-seller if the two girls could have gone back into the theater. "Of course," she said, but it had never occurred to Willis to ask.) Boskone 30 March 11, 1993 Page 4 Writing about history can be difficult. Willis says it's hard to write about the Civil War because too many people know _e_v_e_r_y_t_h_i_n_g and will catch any mistake you make. (On the other hand, there are also those who will ask, "Who's this Grant character?") Other eras may not be as well known; when the authors were writing _1_7_7_6 (the musical), they discovered that they couldn't use some of the best lines people had said, because everyone would think they were made up. For example, one of the principals said that unless the issue of slavery were decided then, within a hundred years it would tear the country apart. These are documented in an appendix to the published script, in case anyone is interested. Shared Worlds and Share-cropped Worlds Sunday, 1 PM Lisa Barnett, Gregory Feeley, Evelyn C. Leeper, Don Sakers This panel started with everyone on it saying they had no idea why they were on it. But given that we were here, we made the best of it. (My only idea was that I am known as a fan of Sherlock Holmes pastiches and parodies, and what are all the new Holmes novels and stories but a shared world?) First, what is the difference between "shared worlds" and "share-cropped worlds"? (The latter term was coined by Richard Curtis, by the way.) Shared worlds are those in which the authors all participate equally (more or less). Examples would include the "Liavek" and "Wild Cards" series. Share-cropped worlds, on the other hand, are those which one person controls, for which authors are hired to work within limits and constraints set by the owner, and for which the owner gets a payment even if he or she has not done any of the writing. Examples of this would be the "Isaac Asimov's Robot City" novels or the "Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway" novels. Share-cropped worlds are also referred to as franchise fiction. (I noted that novelizations of films also fall in this category to some extent; later it was observed that all writing for non-anthology television series would also be franchise fiction.) The earliest example of "shared worlds" that anyone could name was the "Twayne Triplets," in which three authors started from the same planetary description to create independent novels. Of them, only James Blish's _C_a_s_e _o_f _C_o_n_s_c_i_e_n_c_e remains well-known. The technique of "world-building" and then handing out the world to a variety of authors continues even now though. Share-cropped worlds are what I also refer to as "Fred Nobody Writing in the World of Joe Hugo-Winner," usually with Fred Nobody's name in five-point type and Joe Hugo-Winner's in twenty-point type. Someone else suggested that perhaps some of these books needed to have on the cover something like "Isaac Asimov had absolutely nothing to do with this book" in large type. Many people agreed that much franchise fiction was like strip-mining: taking a Boskone 30 March 11, 1993 Page 5 profitable setting and churning out works as fast as possible with no concern about whether they were destroying any possibility of creating genuinely original works in that setting later on. Of course, for authors who have salable settings and who are too old or ill to continue writing in them, this does not seem to be as big a concern. Share-cropping can also include co-authoring, although the obvious drawback here is that all good writing will be attributed to the established author and all bad writing will be blamed on the new author. This assumes an old author/new author pairing, of course. In general, this is the case, but there are exceptions. For example Robert Silverberg collaborated with Isaac Asimov in expanding Asimov's "Ugly Little Boy" into a novel. But in this instance, the line between the two is clearly drawn and relatively well-known-- Silverberg wrote everything that didn't appear in the original short story. Another exception was the collection _F_o_u_n_d_a_t_i_o_n'_s _F_r_i_e_n_d_s, in which well-known authors were all asked to write tribute stories for Asimov set in Asimov's universe. But again, this is a special case, and it is obvious what is the author's and what is the "owner's." Feeley said that sometimes even established authors will go into the franchise fiction field as the "junior partner." Michael Kube-McDowell, he said, felt that writing one of the "Robot City" novels would help his career, particularly if it were filed next to his other books, because then people who liked the one might buy the others. Someone pointed out this doesn't work nearly as well if all the "Robot City" books are filed together under Asimov, which seemed to be where I saw them. Well-known authors are used in some series, particularly the "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" series, to revive declining interest by providing a novel that is a marked improvement over other recent entries. (I should note here that a recent _S_c_i_e_n_c_e _F_i_c_t_i_o_n _C_h_r_o_n_i_c_l_e reports that Michael Kube-McDowell would like to drop the "Kube" and become just Michael P. McDowell, but due to the number of "Michael McDowell"'s writing, he is having some difficulty. For now, one should consider him to be Michael P. McDowell writing under the pseudonym "Michael Kube-McDowell." I consider this is yet further evidence that changing one's name at marriage can lead to complications down the line; the "Kube" in this case refers to a marriage dissolved five years ago.) Someone compared the whole franchising system to Amway: Mercedes Lackey started by writing in Anne McCaffrey's universe, and now other authors are writing in Mercedes Lackey's universe. This is all reminiscent of Renaissance paintings, where (for example) many paintings attributed to Rembrandt turned out to be merely "from the school of Rembrandt." Someone brought up the issue of "moral rights to copyright." In the United States, and under the Berne Convention in general, Boskone 30 March 11, 1993 Page 6 such a concept is not recognized, but in Britain it is (apparently). As I understand it, this means that if someone produces a work-for- hire, whether a franchise novel or a drawing in their capacity as artist for a company or some other work for which the copyright is owned by someone else, the actual artist still has some control over how that work is used. So someone who wrote a franchise novel could prevent the copyright owner from changing the hero from defeating the villain in a duel to stabbing him in the back, or someone who painted a mother and child to advertise soap flakes could prevent having that illustration used to promote an anti-choice candidate. (Disclaimer: I may have misunderstood what was being described, but this is what I think I heard.) I also think that this prevents someone from claiming to have produced a work actually produced by someone else. The discussion of issues of ownership led one audience member to point out that folk music (outside of science fiction fandom) and fan fiction (within it) ignore ownership. The latter has resulted in some unpleasant legal ramifications for some of those who have "appropriated" another author's world, especially if the appropriator has asked first and was refused. It's difficult to plead ignorance in such a case. The recent _T_e_x_t_u_a_l _P_o_a_c_h_e_r_s: _T_e_l_e_v_i_s_i_o_n _F_a_n_s & _P_a_r_t_i_c_i_p_a_t_o_r_y _C_u_l_t_u_r_e by Henry Jenkins (Routledge, 1992, $15.95) discusses this at great length in the context of television and film fandoms (e.g., "Star Trek" fandom, "Beauty and the Beast" fandom). The desire to write in someone else's universe is not limited to fans, of course--someone said that even Joanna Russ had written a K/S story, which was available only as samizdat, of course. (No, I have no idea where you can get it. Don't bother to ask.) Someone else claimed that Mark Twain wrote a Sherlock Holmes parody; I don't know what that one is either, but if you do, please let me know. There are also works that are co-authored without being share- cropped, or shared beyond the co-authors. (A shared world implies more than one work, and different authors involved for different works. Niven and Pournelle have written two "Motie" novels, but this does not make it a shared world.) The problem with co- authoring, or collaboration, someone said, is that each partner does 90% of the work. To wrap up, I said, "I would like to think that there is some way for an established author to mentor a new author, but I don't think this [share-cropping] is it, because it diminishes both the established author and the new author." Amazingly, the other panelists felt that summed it up quite nicely. Leaving Even leaving was an adventure. Because of our dead battery, we needed to find someone who could give us a jump. Jeff Hecht kindly Boskone 30 March 11, 1993 Page 7 did so, and it still took ten minutes of cranking to get our engine to catch. (We replaced the battery when we got home.) On the way home, we stopped for dinner at Traveler Restaurant Book Cellar in Union, Connecticut. The upstairs is a restaurant with a gimmick: "a free book with every meal," though the books are of the sort one would find at the end of the day in a rummage sale and the food is undistinguished. The walls are covered with autographed photographs of famous authors, most of whom probably never ate there but sent autographed pictures when asked. The basement is a regular used bookstore with very reasonable prices. (I found Harlan Ellison's _S_t_a_l_k_i_n_g _t_h_e _N_i_g_h_t_m_a_r_e from Phantasia Press for $3.50, for example.) It's out in the middle of nowhere, but probably worth a visit if you're passing by on your way between New York and Boston. Miscellaneous Membership seems to have _f_i_r_m_l_y settled in around 900, in spite of the return to the Boston area. Framingham is still not convenient enough to public transportation to show a really big increase over Springfield. Next year for Boskone 31 (February 18-20, 1994) the Guests of Honor are Emma Bull and Will Shetterly, and Special Guests of Honor are Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Theresa Nielsen Hayden.