Date: 3 Jan 89 01:07:42 GMT From: ltf@killer.dallas.tx.us (Lance Franklin) Subject: Re: Alternative histories mvp@v7fs1.UUCP (Mike Van Pelt) writes: >jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) writes: >>How about the converse? ... anyone for an alternate universe in which >>Heinlein got to see real military action or D.H.Lawrence could get his >>end up? :-) :-) > >Now that's an interesting thought -- If Heinlein had not contracted >tuberculosis, he almost certainly would have seen action in WWII. How >about a scenario where he rises to Admiral, and is elected president in >1952 instead of Eisenhower? Check out L. Neil Smith's alternate history series, "The Probability Broach", and those following. Although it's only mentioned in passing, in that universe, Heinlein became an Admiral, and "wins decisively at Bering Straits" in 1957 in the war between the North American Confederacy (a "libertarian" society) and the Czar's Russia. However, I don't believe he ever made president (although "None of the Above" made it once). Lance T Franklin ltf@killer.DALLAS.TX.US Date: 20 Feb 89 16:40:54 GMT From: carole@rosevax.rosemount.com (Carole Ashmore) Subject: Re: Female Computers 60255873@WSUVM1.BITNET (Will Fitzpatrick) writes: >No one has mentioned the original 'truly female' computer. Helen O'Loy. >(written I believe by Lester del Ray) You just reminded me of Georgie, the *very* female computer in L. Neil Smith's THE NAGASAKI VECTOR. Carole Ashmore Date: 15 Aug 89 21:08:55 GMT From: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Subject: THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE by L. Neil Smith THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE by L. Neil Smith Tor, 1989 (1986c), 0-812-55425-6 A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper This alternate history novel slipped by me when it first came out. Based on the premise that the Black Plague (actually a variation of it) killed off, not 33%, but 95% of Europe. The result is a world in which there are three large empires: a "Saracen-Jewish" one, a "Mughal-Arab" one, and a "Sino-Aztec" one. Europe is ruled by the Saracen empire, which is currently fighting a war against the Mughal empire on "the island continent." (I never could quite figure out where this was--at times it seemed to be Japan, but that seems an unlikely place for those two empires to interface.) The story takes place at the present time (well, about the year 2000 C.E., though dates are given in the Islamic calendar). The main character, Sedrich Owaldsohn, lives in a Europe ruled by superstition. Technological advances are, for the most part, prohibited and religious groups are in authority locally. The two main groups are the Brotherhood of the Cult of Jesus in Hell (a Christian group run by men) and the Mistresses of the Sisterhood (a Wiccan group run by women). Sedrich develops a new invention and is persecuted by the head of the Brotherhood, who eventually drives Sedrich out. Sedrich then travels to America, where he changes his name to Fireclaw and lives as an Amerind (or whatever the term would be in this universe) on the outskirts of the Aztec empire and gets involved in a mission to deliver a Saracen princess to the Aztec prince. The alternate world is of some interest, though I suspect that had the Spaniards not conquered the Incas, the Incas would have eventually spread northward and overcame the Aztecs. But more importantly, I find it hard to believe the level of technology achieved by the Aztecs while at the same time they retained massive human sacrifice and other cultural attitudes that would seem to result in a stagnant rather than an advancing culture. In part this can be explained by the "Dreamers," six million people who dream of alternate worlds (including ours) and whose dreams are written down as directions for producing new technology. (There was an interesting counterpoint in the opening scene of a medieval pogrom against the Jews of the village with the scenes towards the end of the six million dreamers.) However, I still find the results unconvincing. Some may say my final complaint has to do with "political correctness." Smith has written a very brutal (though not explicit perse) rape scene for no reason that I can discern (the rape scene may be necessary to the plot, but not the manner of it). What particularly struck me about it was its similarity to rape scenes in J. Neil Schulman's RAINBOW CADENZA. Now normally I wouldn't make anything of this, but there are two points worth noting. First, both Schulman and Smith have won the Libertarian Party's Prometheus Award, which would indicate a certain similarity in their philosophies (at least to the people who give the award). Second, Smith acknowledges a phrase of Schulman's at the beginning of THE CRYSTAL EMPIRE and refers to Schulman as an "so-far-unindicted co-conspirator", and thus I think it more than just coincidence that they have written similar scenes. And as in THE RAINBOW CADENZA there is a scene in which the characters discuss this rape and how it's just a manifestation of male violence, the same as warfare and fighting. Now this is not the main part of the book, and perhaps I am over- reacting to it, but I found this offensive, unconvincing, and trivializing. This may have colored how I felt about the book as a whole (though I wasn't greatly enamored of it even before then), but the bottom line is that I cannot recommend this book. Evelyn C. Leeper +1 201-957-2070 att!mtgzy!ecl ecl@mtgzy.att.com Date: 17 Aug 89 15:07:41 GMT From: djo@pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes) Subject: Wounding Autumnal Cities db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry) writes: >I think of Dhalgren as a "coming-of-age" novel in which the main character >is outside whatever coming-of-age rituals that various parts of his >society might have. Interesting: Jim Allen, shortly after the book came out, offered a similar interpretation, which had DHALGREN as the tale of "the forging of an artistic soul," or somesuch. At the time I thought this was on the right track -- *A* right track, I should say; DHALGREN is a bit too multiplex for there to be one "right" track -- but a bit too heavily weighted down with Joycean baggage. Just because Dhalgren uses tricks from FW doesn't mean you should look for its meaning in A PORTRAIT, right? A rather more useful interpretation shortly after publication was Gil Gaier's suggestion that Bellona was SRD's vision of a heaven where *he* could be happy. (I mean, look, you don't have to work but you can if you want to; food's there for the taking; ditto basic goods; and whenever the Kidd says "let's ball" there's always *someone* ready to jump in with him.) Then there's the suggestion of a book I read recently (and, damn it, I can't recall title *or* author. If anyone really cares I'll post a list of a few books on Delany I've found over the years) that DHALGREN is essentially about freedom. If *all* the restraints on society were removed, Delany (in this interpretation) is saying, this is the way various types of people would behave. In that sense, DHALGREN is an intensely libertarian book, though I wouldn't recommend it to those who enjoy the first-initial-middle-name-last-name crowd. (You know: L. Neil Smith, etc.) And note that, though he himself seems to be intensely uncomfortable with middle-class American values, he *does* show that there are people (the Richards) who, given complete freedom, would still choose to live that way. My own response: yes, I think that all three of these (coming of age; heaven; gedankenexperiment in freedom) are among the things DHALGREN is about. And I'll also put forth the claim that it is definitely science fiction, and not fantasy. Or, rather, it's something that uses all the techniques and trappings of science fiction but doesn't fit into the mainstream of science fiction the way that even the weirdest works of the soi-disant "New Wave" did. Gad, is this book *really* fifteen years past publication...? >He's looking for an identity (literally; he can't remember his name) among >several fragments of our society brought together for the purpose by the >author. "So howled out for the world to give him a name." The elision in this sentence is a marvellous bit of compactness -- by simply skipping a word Delany's implied worlds about the Kidd's awakening to self- awareness; not only is there no name ("So Kidd howled out for the world to give him a name?" Wouldn't work!), but there isn't even a pronoun - -- as the sentence progresses the first bit of self-awareness dawns, and Kidd discovers that, at least, he is a "him." >Looked at this way the cyclical nature of the book No, no... It's *NOT* a cycle, or rather, it's not *circular*. (Glad I noticed the alternate meaning of "cyclical" before I made a complete fool of myself.) It's a spiral, of which we're only given one loop but also the tools to extrapolate the loops that follow and precede it. The girls coming into the city as Kidd comes out are *NOT* the same girls that come out when Kidd comes in (look carefully), and the interchange between them, though reversed, is also altered in somewhat subtler ways. The Kidd goes through three loops (at least): first he's the eighteen-year-old main character, experiencing the events of DHALGREN; then he's the 27-year-old writer (and by the way, that's not him in the mirror, it's Delany), writing DHALGREN... but not the DHALGREN we see. And then, in a more subtle way, he goes on to be the writer of the final product, which includes the first two. Only, of course, Kidd didn't write that; Delany did... which explains the mirror, sort of... >Meanwhile the main character leaves us to form his own cycle with the >sentence: "I have come to [to] wound the autumnal city". Lose them brackets, suh. The doubling of "to" is deliberate, intentional. "coming to" is becoming conscious: thus, this could be read, "I have become conscious to wound the autumnal city." Why wound? Why autumnal? Harder questions. "Wound," in particular, almost makes me want to flee back to the baggage of Joyce -- "he fears the lancet of my art as much as I fear that of his," thinks Stephen of the medical student Mulligan. Surely the wound *is* DHALGREN, or whatever the Kidd actually writes. And remember, the first thing he wrote was BRASS ORCHIDS, titled (in one way) after the woundful weapon worn by Scorpions. (One way? Yes. Recall that Ernest Newboy thinks the title appropriate but funny. The reason is one that an erudite poet would notice immediately, but Kidd might not have been aware of at all: the etymology of "orchid." It derives from the Greek _orkhis_, for testicle. Right: brass balls.) So his writing *is* a weapon, cutting the city. >Anyone else have interpretations of Dhalgren? Is there any published >criticism of it? (I have George Slusser's booklet on Delany). Sigh. I *wish* I could remember the names and authors of the other two books. I'll try to remember to bring 'em in with me later in the week. If you want a great contemporaneous "killer review," though, try to find the review in (I believe it was) ANALOG -- I believe by Lester Del Rey. He called it "A Great Big Hunk of Bellona." Ted Sturgeon, on the other hand, commented that someone asked him if he'd read DHALGREN. "Not finished yet," he said, "I'm only on my third time through..." Dan'l Date: 11 Sep 89 19:19:50 GMT From: eaubry@eagle.wesleyan.edu Subject: Star Wars Characters in Novels Many years ago, when Star Wars was still a pretty fresh idea, Alan Dean Foster and Brian Daley borrowed some of the characters and wrote novels about them. Assuming that I am not the only person aware of this fact, I would like to put the following two questions to the net: 1: I am aware of five such novels: "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" by Alan Dean Foster "Han Solo at Star's End" by Brian Daley "Han Solo's Revenge" by Brian Daley "Han Solo and the Lost Legacy" by Brian Daley "Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu" by L. Neil Smith Are there any more? I heard tell of two more Lando books, but I never saw them in any bookstore. Are they still in print? Did any other author borrow any other characters for similar treatment? And if so... 2: Are they any good? Personally, I thought the Han Solo books were the best of the lot. "Splinter" was invalidated as soon as "The Empire Strikes Back" came out, and the Lando book was just plain lame. If any more books exist (other than the movie novelizations) I would really like to hear about them. Even if they're horrible, this is the sort of thing I collect (and I have long since run out of steam on the Star Trek novels). Thanks, Ed Date: 12 Sep 89 16:05:13 GMT From: jas@saturn.wustl.edu (J. Schrauner) Subject: Re: Star Wars Characters in Novels eaubry@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes: >1: I am aware of five such novels: > "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" by Alan Dean Foster > "Han Solo at Star's End" by Brian Daley > "Han Solo's Revenge" by Brian Daley > "Han Solo and the Lost Legacy" by Brian Daley > "Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu" by L. Neil Smith > >Are there any more? I heard tell of two more Lando books, but I never saw >them in any bookstore. Are they still in print? Did any other author >borrow any other characters for similar treatment? And if so... There are two more Lando books, which I am sorry to say I don't remember the names too well. They were both of the form "Lando Calrissian and the..." and about the same quality as the one you read. I think one was Flamewind of so-and-so. I have all of the Star Wars books and I could check if you really wanted to know the names, but the Han Solo books were much, much better. Jay Shrauner Date: 13 Sep 89 15:47:24 GMT From: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Subject: Re: Star Wars Characters in Novels eaubry@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes: >1: I am aware of five such novels: > "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" by Alan Dean Foster > "Han Solo at Star's End" by Brian Daley > "Han Solo's Revenge" by Brian Daley > "Han Solo and the Lost Legacy" by Brian Daley > "Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu" by L. Neil Smith >Are there any more? I heard tell of two more Lando books, but I never >saw them in any bookstore. Are they still in print? The three L. Neil Smith books (in order) are: "Lando Calrissian & the Mindharp of Sharu" "Lando Calrissian & the Flamewind of Oseon" "Lando Calrissian & the Starcave of ThonBoka" I doubt they're still in print (you could check BOOKS IN PRINT)--now that STAR WARS is not a hot movie item, bookstore tie-ins have dropped off.... Evelyn C. Leeper +1 201-957-2070 att!mtgzy!ecl ecl@mtgzy.att.com