Issue #110, October 1997

FEATURES

Fiona Kelleghan: John Kessel’s Screwball SF: 1

Joe Sanders: Death, Transfiguration, and More Death in Two Stories by Terry Bisson: 5

Nancy Lambert: A Flat Earth with Heroes and Flying Machines: 13

Paula Lieberman: Tripoint: A Rebuttal: 18

REVIEWS

David Brin’s Brightness Reef, reviewed by Brian Stableford: 1

J. G. Ballard’s Cocaine Nights, reviewed by Rob Latham: 8

Mark Fabi’s Wyrm, reviewed by Michael Levy: 14

Kim Antieau’s The Gaia Websters, reviewed by Kathleen Ann Goonan: 15

Steven Brust and Emma Bull’s Freedom & Necessity, reviewed by Bill Sheehan: 16

Pat Murphy’s Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles, reviewed by Gary Reger: 17

PLUS
A streetwise observation by Cory Doctorow (p. 11), a Read This by Gordon Van Gelder (p. 12), an award and appreciation by Delia Sherman (p. 19), autopsy notes from Michael Andre-Driussi (p. 21), Screed (p. 23), and an editorial (p. 24).

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Can Sequels Drive You Mad?



Well, here we are living through interesting times in sf.
It seems to us that the field is showing surprising vigor and aggression while teetering on the edge of the unknown. The new Avon Eos sf imprint is being launched with fanfare, T-shirts, and ads in the New Yorker. This month none other than John Updike is publishing a new novel that happens to be set in the future. The sf magazines, and short sf in general, continue quite strong in experiment and accomplishment, regardless of financial difficulties everywhere. Five minutes from now many things might change, but the science fiction field in the English language, in Canada, Australia, England, and the U.S., is producing a wealth of first-class work.

Truthfully, it seems to me that horror literature has fallen on very hard times, with few commercial markets and comparatively few outstanding writers. The most significant fact is that although the finest stories and novels are excellent, the average work is less accomplished than the average of, say, ten years ago. Perhaps this is due to the preponderance of semiprofessional editing in horror in this decade (I like to think that good editing adds something of real value). And of course fine publications such as the last issue of Stuart David Schiff’s Whispers (combined with the last issue of W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook) show what really can be done to produce horror fiction of high quality in a semiprozine—but they are exceptions.

Big, especially big multi-volume, fantasy is thriving this fall, as it has for years, but most of the best work is still done in single, stand-alone volumes. This does not have to be the case, since one of the longest literary traditions in Western civilization is the fantastic romance, continued over decades or centuries in many sequels. I mention Arthurian romance, and the romances of Amadis of Gaul (117 or more sequels) as historical exemplars, but there are many others. Cervantes felt they could drive you mad, but he couldn’t kill them off. There is not a clear and separate tradition of short fantasy fiction nearly so long or strong, but it appears that one is forming in recent decades. It occurs at its best most frequently in single-author collections, a few anthologies, and occasionally in the sf magazines (traditionally in F&SF and now Realms of Fantasy). It is strange that with the novel so strong, a magazine such as Unknown Worlds does not exist. It seems as if it should now.

We wonder how this will look ten years from now: a new Golden Age? The day before the Apocalypse?

—David G. Hartwell & the editors