From sun!plaid!fanzine-request Fri Jan 17 12:00:00 1986

Subject: Table Of Contents/Masthead

OtherRealms, Volume 1, Number 1 (January 1986)

Table of Contents:

o Editorial: Am I missing something? -- chuq von rospach

o Words: Brokedown Palace -- alice!jj

o Writers: And You Thought Your FIRST Sale Was Hard... -- Jim Brunet

o Words: Mindkiller -- Peter Korn

o Authors: A Profile of Harry Turtledove -- Jim Brunet

o Picos: Quick reviews from the readership

o Readers: This month's readers survey

o Letters: The start of the Letter column

Edited and Published on an almost monthly schedule by:

Chuq Von Rospach

3770 Flora Vista #1805

Santa Clara, CA. 95051

(sun!plaid!chuq)

All material in this magazine is Copyright 1986 by Chuq Von Rospach,

all rights reserved. One time rights only have been acquired from signed of

credited contributors. All rights are hereby assigned to the contributors

Reproduction rights: Permission is given to reproduce or duplicate OtherRealms

in its entirety for non-commercial uses as long as all associated copyright

notices and bylines are left intact. If a subset of the issue needs to be

duplicated, it must include all copyright notices and bylines and this

masthead. Re-use of an individual article is forbidden without permission

of the author.

Subscriptions: Subscription is currently free and limited to the USENET

electronic network and other networks accessible through USENET. Subscription

requests should be mailed to the address "sun!plaid!fanzine-request".

Submissions: Submissions should be mailed to the address "sun!plaid!fanzine"

in text or nroff format. A writers guide is available for the asking from the

"fanzine-request" address.

Correspondence: All correspondence should be addressed to

"sun!plaid!fanzine-request". Unless otherwise specified, all letters will

be considered for publication in the letter column. Letters to an authors

should be mailed directly if possible, but I will forward them to the best

of my ability.

COMING ATTRACTIONS

Jim Brunet talks about a young woman who is a winner of the Writer's of the

Future Contest and has since appeared in F&SF and ASIMOV'S.

Chuq Von Rospach talks about a set of historical romance novels -- starring

a vampire.

Also, "Inventing Reality" a look at making the fantastic make sense.

WRITE FOR OTHERREALMS

Write for OtherRealms, the magazine about Science Fiction and Fantasy. Authors

are welcome to submit articles for the following sections: Words (book

reviews), Pico (mini reviews), Visions (media reviews), Authors (interviews

and articles about authors), Conventions (con reviews of major cons), Fandom

(articles about fandom), Awards (let us know who won what!), Writers (about

being a writer), Fiction, and Parting Shots (guest editorials). A Writers

Guide to OtherRealms is available, if you are interested in writing please

ask for it. All submissions and requests should go to

"sun!plaid!fanzine-request"

In case you hadn't noticed it, the walls around our ghetto are crumbling and

Science Fiction books are making it onto best seller lists. The world is

peeking over the barriers and discovering what we've always known.

I recently read a story, though, that brought forward something that has been

bothering me for a while. In the January "Fantasy & Science Fiction", Greg

Benford published "Newton Sleep." It is a departure from his hard SF, is well

done and I recommend it highly.

As I read it a little voice in the back of my head kept whispering "Am I

missing something?"

This story works on its own, but to really understand what was going on, you

have to recognize that one of the main characters is Ernest Hemingway and to

know something about his life. Hemingway, one of the best writers of his

generation, was a journalist in the Spanish Civil war and finally ended his

life as a suicide. Without that knowledge, the motivations of Benford's

character remain hidden. The story is a lot more than just the light fantasy

that it seems at first glance. But I realized realize that the story had a

deeper level to explore. It wasn't just about Hemingway, Benford was writing

a Hemingway story, and again the story becomes something else because the

hidden references back to Hemingway's work allow him to say things without

writing the words.

I've taken a roundabout way to make a point. In talking to people it seems

that the percentages of people who don't venture outside the wall of our SF

ghetto is as large as the group that never comes in. Walls work both ways.

And that's a shame, because there is a lot out there in the 'real' world of

publishing. I'm not talking about Sydney Sheldon or Erica Jong, but Robert

Ludlum and Laurence Sanders and Erma Bombeck. And the classics.

Once you start exploring, you'll find that many SF writers have been influenced

by the classics. It shows up in their work, and those who prefer the ghetto

miss a lot because of it.

There are a lot of classical references to be enjoyed. Steve Brust's work "To

Reign in Hell" takes on more meaning if you've read the Bible, of course, but

it also pays tribute to Dante's "Inferno". Phil Farmer's Riverworld uses as

main characters Sir Richard Burton, Alice Hargreaves, and Mark Twain. For all

of its faults, his Twain is a good characterization of a man who symbolized

America through his writings. Twain's Riverworld actions make a lot more

sense if you've read Twain.

If you think of movies when you hear the name Burton, you're missing out on

the reason for the series to exist. Sir Richard Burton was a real-life

personification of the great adventurer, and Riverworld is intended to be his

greatest adventure. If you know nothing of the life of Charles Dodgson and

the girl-child he wrote Alice in Wonderland for, the relationship between her

and Burton in the book makes no sense.

The wall is imaginary, a phantom; the ghetto, a convenient stomping ground.

You can read Lovecraft and still attend a con. You can read Twain, can ponder

Kafka, or Dante, or Dickens. There is a lot of very good work out there

waiting for you.

The outside world is getting smart enough to sample what we have to offer

them. Are we going to reciprocate and sample their wares as well?

From ihnp4!alice!jj Fri Dec 27 12:33:05 1985

"Brokedown Palace", Steven Brust, Ace, 2.95 US, 270 pp, ISBN 0-441-07181-3.

Copyright J.D. Johnston 12/27/85, Warren, NJ.

"Brokedown Palace" is Steven K. Zoltan Brust's fourth book. Its scope,

in contrast with the third, "To Reign in Hell", is small, concerning

the survival and succoring of a small kingdom cut off from the rest of

the universe by disinterest and lack of need. Brust borrows names and

folklore from the Hungarian tradition and names, and creates a small,

inwardly directed world that could (although this reviewer would not

suggest that such is the author's intent) parallel some of the world's

great historic institutions.

The story is written from the viewpoint of the youngest of four royal

brothers, each with a different problem. Over time, some of the

brothers accept their weaknesses, turning them to strengths, and others

fail, in ways large or small. The problem presented at the beginning

of the story, the staleness of the Fenarian royalty, is extended to the

physical symbols (or perhaps it is the other way around), and resolved

in a most unusual way that seems quite natural to the setting, as well

as (ahem) rather symbolic of several well-known philosophies.

The story certainly is of the "wheel turning" or "renewal of the circle"

style, perhaps (the reviewer is not well versed in the subject, having

failed to find a source thereof) in the style of Hungarian Mythology,

and certainly in the way of several non-deific mystical philosophies.

Brust does a most remarkable job of using the language to portray both

the characters and the situation, in a way that suggests that he would

be a most remarkable story-teller in other ages. A great deal of the

charm and pleasure of the story is in the modest and occasionally wry

language of "Brokedown Palace".

Those who have read "Jhereg" and "Yendi" will find more of the same story

telling, although in a more mature and less jarring fashion. Some of the

elements of the world of "Jhereg" appear in "Brokedown Palace", but the

story is NOT a sequel, nor does it appear, at least at the surface, to be

connected by anything other than the names of the wildlife.

Hard SF fans will find nothing of hard SF in this story, which reads much

as a folk tale, or fantasy. Those who like stories of *E*P*I*C* character,

as in "To Reign in Hell", will find nothing to suit their sense of cosmic

importance. Those readers who wish to enjoy a quiet, non-jarring book,

who are fascinated by colorful (but far from overbearing) tales, and who

like to read a good story, well written, and with interesting characters

and human-sized problems, will greatly enjoy this book. As is clear from

this review, I am of the latter category.

On a scale of 0-5, I figure I'll rate it a 4. It's not (quite)

a classic, but quite worth reading, and it deserves preservation.

From ihnp4!ima!haddock!ism780!ism780b!jimb Fri Jan 3 21:31:40 1986

From: Jim Brunet

And You Thought Your FIRST Sale Was Hard....

by

James Brunet

A common assumption of beginning writers is, "Gee, if I can just get

my foot in the door and make a first sale, I can start selling regularly

because the editor will know me." In my own case, I made a sale to FANTASY

BOOK over a year ago. I KNOW that my writing is better, I now wince at some

of the writing in the story that I published. Another writer in my writing

group is in the same boat; he sold to F&SF, with no sales since. We've both

heard of other writers with similar experiences. So what's the problem?

"You look outside the next day, and the sun is still shining, and

birds are still singing and you realize that no one gives a damn." So said

Algis Budrys, SF writer and critic, when I asked him about the

after-the-first-sale blues encountered by many writers trying to make their

*second* sale. Our subsequent conversation confirmed what I had already

learned the hard way: one sale does not constitute a "break" into the

market. Talking to other writers and editors, as well as examining my own

pattern of non-success, has given me some idea of what some of the problems

of one-sale writers are.

*Story content.* Most writers who have made their first sale are at

least passable in terms of their writing craft. While their storytelling

abilities will not immediately bring Larry Niven to mind, or their style

evoke recollections of Roger Zelazny, they have mastered the basic art of

getting scene, character, and action down on paper in an entertaining way.

You may hear a writer complain, "...but my Merlin re-telling is just

as good as the ones that Jane Yolen gets published in F&SF" or "...my

post-holocaust story is a cross between Vinge, Brin, and Palmer."

Ah, but it turns out that's the problem. The story may be *just as

good* -- but put yourself in the editor's shoes. You have two stories of

more or less equal quality. One is by a recognized name, the other by a new

writer. Which story will help you sell copies by adding to the prestige of

the publication?

For a new writer to get published, their material must be either NEW,

or else extraordinarily well written. In the case of David Palmer's novella

EMERGENCE, a Hugo winner after it was published in ANALOG, it was both. The

story was a post-nuclear-holocaust story. The plot of plucky survivor makes

good is rather routine. What made EMERGENCE stand out was the NEW twist of

the point-of-view character -- an adolescent girl genius who unknowingly is

part of a human mutant strain that appeared in the 1920's -- coupled with

exceedingly good writing. Chances are that if you've sold a story, it was

one of your more imaginative efforts.

If you're having trouble selling your stories, look through your file

copies of your manuscripts that are out on the market. If you see a lot of

"me-too" plots, go ahead and keep them out on the market. You *may* catch

lightning in a bottle, an editor might find YOUR story to be the one that is

refreshing and different. If the stories don't sell, keep them. You may

need them someday when you DO have a name. In the meantime, every time you

sit down at your wordprocessor or typewriter, ask yourself "Does the story I

have in mind stand out sufficiently from all the stories by my favorite

authors?" By breaking new ground, you will increase the chances of an editor

buying a story from you, instead of someone else.

*Losing sight of the market.* Even in SF, all editors are human, at

least until proved otherwise. Each editor has his or her own style and

unique tastes. Reading entries in WRITER's MARKET or FICTION WRITER's MARKET

will give you some idea of editorial tastes. A careful reading of your

target magazines will give you an even better idea of your editor's taste.

So will carefully reading any personal notes on rejection slips from a given

editor.

Many neo-pros quite correctly attempt to learn the market before they

first start sending manuscripts out, only to develop instant amnesia once

that first sale hits the mailbox. "Oh, boy. I can now send that fantasy

that F&SF rejected to Stan Schmidt at ANALOG, and send that cyber-punk hard

SF story to FANTASY BOOK." Well, comrades, we may undergo a sea change with

our first sale, but it's highly unlikely that the editors have.

A professional credit listed on your cover letter will almost

certainly get your story a closer reading by the editor or first reader; it

may even get your story out of the "slush pile" or at least to the top of it.

But it doesn't change the nature and character of the magazine. Immediately

after my first sale, the nature of my rejection slips got worse, not better.

I soon recognized that I was trying too hard and went back to my normal

hard-headed appraisal of the market for each story. No, it didn't result in

a new sale, but the tone of the rejection slips told me that I was closer,

and if you view getting published as a statistical quantum event as I do,

then at least your odds are better. (Remember, in the best of cases its a

a very tough market -- typically only one percent or less of all submissions

get published. William F. Wu, whose WONG'S LOST AND FOUND EMPORIUM was

nominated for a Hugo, still routinely got rejection slips two years later

for stories he thought were just as good.)

Remember, too, that part of an editor's being human includes the

capacity to make mistakes. Before EMERGENCE was picked up by Stan Schmidt,

another editor rejected it with a note that said "Something this long needs

to be good. This isn't."

*Self-mimicry.* The final problem that occurs with new writers is

that once they have made a sale, they tend to repeat themselves. If the

first sale was a moody dark fantasy set in suburban Los Angeles, they'll

write three more supernatural stories along the same lines. Big name authors

do this all the time; the practice is known variously as writing a series,

creating a distinctive style, or milking the public.

Unless the story is both first rate and distinctive, however, the

writer is back to square one with the magazine editor, who is looking for

something NEW, or otherwise something that will help sell the magazine, i.e.,

a story by a writer with a following. As outlined in the beginning of this

article, derivative writing is difficult to sell, especially for a newcomer,

and doubly difficult if the newcomer's writing is derivative of his or her

own work.

*Proof?* Interesting assertions, but where's the proof you might

ask. I have none. These revelations have crystallized for me within the

past two months as a result of letters, insights, and conversations -- some

of the latter had been rolling around in my head since Westercon in July.

I'm applying these observations to my own work and have audaciously

set a goal of four sales for 1986. I'll let you know how it turns out; in

the meantime, your comments are welcome. The best of luck to all of you who

write and send your manuscripts out.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Editors Shawna McCarthy, Stan Schmidt, George Scithers

for their letters and conversations about my writing and the publishing

process in general; writers Algis Budrys , David Weiner, and William F. Wu

for sharing their experiences.

From korn@cory.berkeley.edu Tue Jan 14 14:30:03 1986

"Mindkiller", Spider Robinson, Berkley Books, N.Y., $2.95, 246 pages

(originally published Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982)

With any review, one of the challenges is to tell the readers about the

book without telling them about the book--and thus spoiling the book for

them. I'm in the "know as little about the book before reading

it as possible" camp. I flatly refuse to read the outside covers or

inside page-long blurb designed to get you to read the book in order to

find that tantalizing scene displayed before you. That said, this review

will try to tell you how Spider Robinson tells you the story--and not

what happens in the story. From that I hope you'll be able to decide

whether or not you'll want to read the book.

Spider Robinson is different from all the other Science Fiction authors I've

read in that he writes human stories first, and SF second. His stories

all have deeper underlying meanings which come first, as opposed to an author

like Heinlein, where it's kind of hard to tell which came first. The SF setting

is almost incidental, though it's definitely not dispensible. Mindkiller is

no exception. This is not a "I want to forget my brain for a bit" reading

in either the Piers Anthony or Niven style

Mindkiller is a very human story, that asks a few important questions about

scientific possibilities the future will very likely bring us. Foremost of

these is the ability to directly stimulate the pleasure center of the brain

electronically (do you see where this might lead in a human story? Guess

again; Spider does something different!).

The style of the book is also very different from the norm of SF novels.

The story is told by two different speakers, alternating chapters. It

took me a while to get into the book b/c of this, but later I found that

I just HAD to keep reading in order to find out what happens to speaker

#1; and after reading speaker #2, I'd have to read all of #1 again because

#2 came to a crisis that needed resolution.

In fact, the entire book is really two building crises desperately needing

a resolution. As a warning to those who need sleep, don't start this book

as I did at 12:30 am. I didn't go to sleep until 6:00 am because I just

COULDN'T put the book down. I found this book the most intense novel I've

ever read, let alone the most intense SF novel.

Perhaps there is one negative thing I can say about Mindkiller. If it's the

first Spider Robinson you've read, you may be just a bit disappointed when

you read others. Don't get me wrong, all his books are excellent. But

Mindkiller is by far the most human and the most intense. Also, he's only

written six books, so you'll exhaust the lot of them quite quickly and want

more.

Without reservation I recommend this book--unless all you want is mindless

first Spider Robinson you've read, you may be just a bit disappointed when

entertainment, in which case you can read Piers Anthony and pick your nose

and try not to groan at the awful puns. In fact, I even like the way he

treats sex. Spider is the _only_ author that treats sex as something people do,

as opposed to aliens (Anthony again) or sex saints (Heinlein).

On our scale of 0-5, it's at least a 5. (I'd put a 6 or 7 on it, but chuq

wants me all of the reviewers to stick to the same system).

From ihnp4!ima!haddock!ism780!ism780b!jimb Thu Jan 9 10:31:45 1986

From: Jim Brunet

Authors: A Profile of Harry Turtledove

by

James Brunet

One of my year-end rituals is a review of all the SF magazines I get,

looking for those stories that I thought stood out from the crowd and

deserved recognition in terms of Hugo nominations, Locus Poll, ANALOG's AnLab

poll, etc. I take the resulting "long" list -- generally about a third of

the total published and break it down into "short" lists of five to seven

titles for each category: novella, novelette and short story.

The final process of picking and ranking the stories is much like

deciding who to kick out of the lifeboat; it's a painful process. One of the

compensating joys, however, is that each year I discover certain writers

placing several titles on my long list and and at least one title on my short

list, writers who aren't well known and whom I had not been consciously aware

of as being "good" writers that I could name if asked.

Following is a review of one writer whose work I've enjoyed for

the past couple of years, yet whose name is not widely known in the SF

community. Obviously, appraising writing is a matter of personal taste,

but the writers I've discovered that I like through this method are so

varied that I hope it will help you find some new favorite names to look

for, whatever your tastes happen to be.

* * *

A rabbi being called to decide whether flesh from a strain of pigs

radically altered by genetic engineering can be kosher; the consequences of

"bluffing" at poker introduced to a Sumerian-level civilization by a

interstellar survey team; the Jamestown colonists contending with not

red-skinned savages, but fur-covered *homo erecti* that lived on in the New

World while *homo sapiens* developed the Old. These are just some of the

premises for the stories of Harry Turtledove, who until recently was

published under the pseudonym of Eric G. Iverson.

One of Turtledove's main assets is developing solid story lines.

Many SF stories feature slender plots, or gimmicks as an excuse for the

story; Turtledove may use a novel idea as a gimmick to hook the reader, but

his stories then proceed to develop the ideas, usually with the the aid of

memorable, identifiable characters.

Turtledove's writing is simple and straightforward. While it may

lack any special elegance -- there are passages of Zelazny or Avram

Davidson that can make me stop and go "Oh, wow!" -- his writing avoids the

elaborately chiseled and self-conscious prose of Lucius Shephard and the

ponderous exposition of a writer like Robert Forward. Not a bad compromise.

It's to Turtledove's credit that I remember and respect even the

stories that I didn't care for, such as "Vilest Beast," which appeared in the

September '85 issue of ANALOG. This story concerned the interaction of the

Jamestown colonists with the New World *homo erecti*, and while it made me

shiver with distaste at what happened, the story was extremely vivid from

an emotional viewpoint.

I appreciate Turtledove's range, from the dark alternate world

described above, to a murder mystery set at the Winter Olympics on a moon of

Saturn, to the humorous piece concerning the rabbi and the pseudo-pork.

Indeed, even in his serious stories, it appears that Turtledove's sense of

humor is never far from the surface. The variety of his work approaches

that of Poul Anderson; I can only hope that we begin to see novels from

Turtledove so that we can have fuller meals borne of his toil in the SF

fields.

I first became aware of Iverson/Turtledove in late 1984; he has

appeared regularly in the pages of ANALOG since then. According to Jay

Kay Klein's Biolog column in the February '85 issue of ANALOG, Turtledove

was first published in 1979, when he sold a two-volume sword-and-sorcery

fantasy. Klein's column also stated that Turtledove abandoned CalTech and

later received a Ph.D. in Byzantine history.

Following is a partial bibliography:

• "Herbig-Haro" ANALOG, 10/84

• "Hindsight" ANALOG, mid-12/84

• "Bluff" ANALOG, 2/85

• "The R-Strain" ANALOG, 6/85

• "Non-Interference" ANALOG, 7/85

• "Les Mortes D'Arthur" ANALOG, 8/85

• "Vilest Beast" ANALOG, 9/85

• "The Road Not Taken" ANALOG, ll/85

• "Hatching Season" ANALOG, 12/85

• "And So To Bed" ANALOG, 1/86

From sun!plaid!fanzine-request Fri Jan 17 12:00:00 1986

FOOTFALL, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle [**]

Del Rey, 1985. 574 pp. (SF Book Club edition).

The cover proclaims, "Probably the finest novel of alien invasion ever written".

Replace "finest" with "longest" and I agree wholeheartedly. Features five SF

writers, the most intelligent President of the United States since Jefferson,

and the usual Niven/Pournelle Cast of Thousands. The first half of the book

was slow going, but things picked up when the action started. These guys can

do better. Anybody might do better.

-- Bill Laubenheimer (ucbvax!wildbill)

FOOTFALL, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle [*****]

del rey, 495 pages, $17.95

You either love Niven and Pournelle or hate them. I hate them (together) , and

loved this book. Don't expect deep insight or new themes, this is a fast paced,

fun, and original rehash of the alien conquest story. It'll give you a hernia,

but its worth it. I'm nominating it for a Hugo this year.

-- chuq von rospach

HACKERS, by Steven Levy [*****]

Dell, $4.50, 430 pages plus index

A detailed book on what it means to be a hacker -- not the way the media

normally uses the term, but as the hackers themselves do. Starting with the

first computers at MIT, this book gives an inside perspective on the people

that formed the underground of the computer industry. The books is three

sections -- Early MIT days, the Homebrew Computer Club, and Sierra On-Line.

The final section should be required reading in all business schools on how

NOT to run a software business. A good perspective on the people behind the

software, and highly recommended.

-- chuq von rospach

THE HIGH KINGS, by Joy Chant [*****]

Bantam books, 245 pages, $3.50

The first book I've seen on English Mythology (no, the Greeks and Romans didn't

have a monopoly, they just have a better agent). The stories of the ancestors

of King Arthur and the Round Table, it really helps fill out English history.

If you like Arthurian works, you have to read this book.

-- chuq von rospach

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT, compiled by Scott Rice [***+]

Penguin, 144 pages, $4.95

A compilation of the best of the worst from the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest,

where everyone tries to write the best worst opening line for a novel. Some

are great, some are inspired, some are just bad, all together they are

sidesplitting (Example, the winner of the Sci-fi category: "The surface of the

strange, forbidden planet was roughly textured and green, much like cottage

cheese gets way after the date on the list says its all right to buy it."

-- chuq von rospach

MEDEA: HARLAN'S WORLD, edited by Harlan Ellison [****]

stories by Poul Anderson, Hal Clement, Thomas M. Disch, Harlan Ellison,

Frank Herbert, Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Robert Silverberg, Theodore

Sturgeon, Kate Wilhelm, and Jack Williamson; illustrations by Kelly

Freas. Bantam, 1985. 532 pp. (SF Book Club edition)

This book is the outgrowth of an extension course on SF given at UCLA by

Ellison in 1975. Ellison being who he is, he was not content with doing the

same old thing in the same old way; this book is the end result of a

demonstration of world-building. The stories range from good to very good.

Even more fascinating, though, were the SF authors trying to figure out where

they and the characters they intended to write about fit into a world the

particulars of which they had been handed shortly before appearing in front

of several hundred people interested in where crazy ideas come from. Especially

enjoyable for anybody who's ever tried to think like an SF writer.

-- Bill Laubenheimer (ucbvax!wildbill)

THE POOH PERPLEX, by Fredrick C. Crews [****]

dutton, 150 pages, $5.75

If you are interested in Pooh, a great book to read if you can find it (best

bet is a university bookstore). A series of literary criticisms of the work of

A.A. Milne in the best literaci form. The English major's version of what Pooh

is all about, my favorite (for pure strangeness) is the freudian evaluation of

the works.

-- chuq von rospach

A STAINLESS STEEL RAT IS BORN, by Harry Harrison [***+]

Bantam, 219 pages, $2.95

The story of the beginnings of Slippery Jim diGriz, super thief. Much better

than the last book (Stainless Steel Rat for President), but not quite as good

as the originals. It does show that there is life left in the series, though.

-- chuq von rospach

SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR. FEYNMAN (ADVENTURES OF A CURIOUS CHARACTER) [***-]

by Richard P. Feynman

Bantam books, 317 pages plus index, $4.50

Parts are truly hilarious, but the books reads like a transcription. Fenyman

rambles, and it could have used some serious editing. Even knowing how he

talks doesn't help as much as it should. He's strange enough to want to wade

through, but expect to skim through parts of it. This book is for everyone

who thinks that subnuclear physicists are fuddy-duddies.

-- chuq von rospach

The TAO OF POOH, by Benjamin Hoff [****+]

penguin books, 158 pages, $4.95

If you're a Pooh fan and haven't found this book, run out and grab it. You

thought that Winnie the Pooh was just a childrens story? Find out what Milne

was really telling the kids...

-- chuq von rospach

VENUS, INC., by Fredrick Pohl and C.M Kornbluth [****/**]

nelson doubleday [SFBC edition], 346 pages

Two novels in one volume: The classic advertising satire "The Space Merchants"

where P&C rake Madison avenue over the coals, and "The Merchant's War" where

Pohl tries to carry the story forward. The first is even more appropriate and

fun than it was when published in 1952, but the sequel simply doesn't carry

the punch -- Pohl tries to toss in a message and forgets to enjoy himself. If

you've ever yelled back at your TV set, read "The Space Merchants".

-- chuq von rospach

---

Pico reviews are short, informal ratings of books you've read. Don't be

afraid to review something someone else has already done. Comments should be

limited to a short paragraph (if you can't say it in that space, you should

write a full review of the work). Pico review ratings will be collated

occasionally to help us see what the group mind thinks.

This month the Readers Survey is in two parts. The first part is to find out a

bit about who is reading OtherRealms, the second part is to get an idea of

what you thought about OtherRealms. Please send your responses to

"sun!plaid!fanzine-request". It should only take a few minutes to do this, and

it will help immeasurably in tuning OtherRealms towards what the readership

wants to see.

chuq

1) Sex: (male or female, not yes)

2) Age:

3) Profession

4) How many Science Fiction Books do you read a month?

5) How many Fantasy Books do you read a month?

6) How many other books do you read a month?

7) How many hardcover books (not Book Club) did you buy in the last year?

8) How many book club books did you buy in the last year?

9) Favorite Author

10) Favorite Book of all time

11) Favorite Book in the last year

12) What magazines do you read?

13) Do you read fanzines? Which ones?

14) Do you go to conventions? Which ones?

I) What did you like most about OtherRealms?

II) What did you like least about OtherRealms?

III) What do you want to see in OtherRealms in the future?

From cwruecmp!edguer Sat Dec 21 01:37:49 1985

Subject: Letter: Researching for Writers

Dear Mr. Von Rospach,

While I am not the best or most creative writer, I enjoy reading

the science fiction and fantasy writings of others. One problem I have

encountered in my reading fairly frequently in 'bad' or erroneous science.

Encountering such problems can easily break my 'suspension of disbelief'

and make an otherwise well written story an effort in patience to finish.

In an effort to help improve the situation and possibly end these problems

for some people I am willing to help people do research. I will answer

short questions with short answers and provide references to more extensive

materials. I will do the legwork so others won't have to.

Aydin Edguer

decvax!cwruecmp!edguer