@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @@@@@ @@@@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ @
@ @ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ @ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@
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.