Issue #108, August 1997

FEATURES

Grania Davis: Avram and Phil: Memoir of a Literary Friendship: 1

Andy Duncan: Just Say No to Genius: C. M. Kornbluth’s “Gomez”: 1

Tom Brennan: The Silver-haired Maiden Lady vs. the Red-headed Hussy or The Author’s Revenge in Eleanor Arnason’s “The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons” (1974): 12

REVIEWS

Tim Power’s Earthquake Weather, reviewed by David Langford: 9

Charles Sheffield’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow, reviewed by Paul Preuss: 18

Michael Marshall Smith’s Spares, reviewed by Damien Broderick: 20

Linda Nagata’s Deception Well, reviewed by Brian Stableford: 22

PLUS

A Read This by Lucy Sussex (p. 6), an Open Letter from Norman Spinrad (p. 14), Screed (p. 23), and an editorial (p. 24).

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Travels with NYRSF



Recently Kathryn and I have been traveling a lot. The places we’ve been together or separately in June and July include Fort Lauderdale (the board meeting of the IAFA); Toronto (Tor sales conference and meeting with writers); Long Beach (Kathryn and I were guests at the SFRA conference on the Queen Mary); Monterey (site visit to 1998 World Fantasy Con facility); San Francisco (the American Library Association Convention); Seattle (Westercon and Clarion West); Westborough, MA (Readercon); and Louisville, KY (Rivercon, where I was toastmaster). During the voyages, we were particularly grateful for the hospitality of Rob Sawyer and Caroline Clink, and Phyllis and Kelly Gotlieb in Toronto, Paul Williams and Cindy Lee Berryhill in Encinitas, Scott and Suzy Baker in Monterey, Charles Brown in Oakland—good party, Charles—John and Pauline Cramer in Seattle, and the crew at Rivercon, Steve and Sue Francis, Joel Zakem, Bob Roehm, etc.

In addition we met and talked to a lot of NYRSF subscribers and we want you to know that we appreciated the opportunity to say hello and particularly appreciated the variety of compliments and encouragement we received. We even had fortunate accidents, such as bumping into Nancy Lambert at a street festival in Santa Monica after hearing Cindy Lee Berryhill perform; meeting Jonathan Strahan, Bill Contento, Grania Davis, Liz Lynn, and many others at the Locus Anniversary/Charles Brown Birthday party; dinner with Poul and Karen Anderson, Jerry and Robert Pournelle, and Pat Murphy at a San Francisco Art Gallery after crossing the city and the Gay Pride parade; finding a carton of pulp magazines in an antique shop and the best meal in California at a B&B in Eureka; visiting Chip Delany, our intrepid Contributing Editor at Clarion West, and then driving back and forth to Readercon with him; or dining at sunset twice at Towboat Annie’s in Louisville with Ken Moore feeding the ducks or Peter Rabbit (author of Drop City) embarrassing his old friend Terry Bisson by telling obscene stories (for instance, about Allen Ginsburg’s electric dildo) in a voice loud enough to be heard across the Ohio.

There was in addition a fine party thrown in June for the departure of Susan Palwick and Gary Meyer to their new life in Las Vegas, where Susan, former NYRSF staffer and now Yale Ph.D., has a tenure-track teaching job. Greg Cox, another of our founding staffers, was there celebrating his move to full time writing and a Consulting Editor position at Tor. Shira Daemon and Ken Houghton, Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, other former staffers, were there, and it gives us occasion to recall that with this issue we complete nine years of monthly publication (remember that one of our mottoes at the start was “monthly till we die”).

—David G. Hartwell & the editors