RICH COAD
I'm just lying here in bed precariously juggling my attention between re-reading Drilkjis 4 and watching a movie about a hairy monster terrorising a ski resort (which is not a bad idea; were I a hairy monster I would terrorise only ski resorts beginning low on the ski set social scale say by tearing up Squaw Valley in California's own High Sierras, slowly trotting up north through Idaho's famed I Forget The Name Slopes, on into Banff, then a quick jet over to TA DA Gstaad to rend limb from limb every beautiful person in Europe. Why would I do this? Well, as a hairy monster, and thus not given to such existential questions as, "Why do I exist?" I can't answer that. I just do. I do not reflect. We hairy monsters just plain don't like people that deface beautiful mountains with expensive lodges, tram cars and beer cans just so they can ride up a stupid chair lift and slide down snow on two long flat pieces of fibreglass.)
CHRIS PRIEST
Verbatim quote from Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 1980, pages 8-9, signed editorial by Isaac Asimov:
There are now four Grand Masters of Science Fiction, as chosen by the Science Fiction Writers of America. These are: Robert A. Heinlein, Jack Williamson, Clifford D. Simak, and L. Sprague de Camp. The first of these was a Campbell discovery and creation; the last three had published material before Campbell, but were given a new birth by the man. I suspect it will be quite a while before a Grand Master will be chosen who was not, in one way or another, involved with Campbell.
And of course, as everyone knows, there wasn't anyone as close to Campbell, as hovered over by Campbell, as molded by Campbell, as I myself was in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s.
Nothing omitted from or added to in this transcript. The context of the remark is a "tribute" to Analog on its 50th anniversary. The paragraphs before and after the quoted ones do not explain, modify or in any sense qualify the ARROGANCE, SELF-SATISFACTION, SELF-IMPORTANCE AND DOWNRIGHT OFFENSIVENESS OF THIS OVERWEIGHT, UNFUNNY AND OUTDATED SCIENCE FICTION WRITER.
Yours, etc. OUTRAGED, Harrow
TARAL
Look at sf today. What can you say about a field of literature that enshrines as awkward and as imitative an amateur as Robert Asprin as a pro? But more important than incomprehensible lapses of taste is the loss of stf-nality the field is undergoing. What is passing as sf these days? Feudal societies with nobles and exaggerated senses of honour, horseback adventures with swordplay, cat people and dragons, telepathic woodfolk and elves.... Look how many of the newly emergent writers are into this – Cherryh, Lee, Bushyager, Mclntyre, Asprin, Chalker, Duane ... and look at the older writers who are drifting in this direction – Anderson, Dickson, Zelazny, LeGuin, McCaffrey. The Door into Fire, Master of Hawks, White Dragon, Birthgrave, Heritage of Hastur, Dragon and the George – they're all pretty much the same book. Same background in rough detail, same sort of characters, same premises, same writing style. Only the plot is different from book to book.
BRIAN EARL BROWN
Both White Dragon and Dark Design reflect a changed attitude towards marketing by the publishers. Del Rey, in particular, seems to insist on sequels to almost any half-way successful book, hence the seemingly endless series of Well World novels. And they want thick books. Great numbers of the massive novels being published today could do with pruning. And Ace books prints all of its stuff in large, inflated type so that what once was 160 pages miraculously becomes 250. Apparently people buy books by weight. 400 pages of McCaffrey is apparently a better buy than 200 pages of LeGuin. Thus writers who should know better are being encouraged to write ever more sloppy and banal material. And worse, the fans just eat this stuff up.
GRAHAM ASHLEY
Certainly the magnitude of what an sf novel can cover is vast and this is perhaps what initially attracts readers to the genre, but it is not a sustaining emotion. You can only write about galactic war, for example, so many times before it becomes as commonplace as catching the train to work every day. At this point certain readers appear to require something more; not, paradoxically, greater scope, but in fact a narrowing of subject matter to the individual, which is the greater degree of characterisation Kevin cries out for.
ERIC MAYER
Don't tell me about "magnitude" of themes, etc. Sf heroes are invariably busy saving the world, and any world, or universe, that can be saved by one man's hitting the baddy over the head in one way or another can't be very big.
DEB ROHAN
I'd like to share a story we read recently ... I may have found a vocation for my old age. "Early in the 19th C.,...the ghost was first seen by a discharged soldier on tramp, a wild man who had broken every commandment and whose conscience was overloaded with crimes ... One night, unable to find a sleeping place in the workhouse, he made up a bed for himself in a corner of one of the wards. He was discovered in the morning a changed man. He ... described the apparition in tones of terror. A thing had descended the stairs at night on three hoofish legs and with a voice like that of a roaring jackass bellowed through a grating where he was sleeping. It was a dreadful nightmare which came night after night. Watch was kept, and one night an old woman who walked with a stick was caught roaring and braying through the grating. Asked to explain herself, she said that this was her way of converting the tramp to a Christian way of life." (E. Maple: The Realm of Ghosts)
WAHF
WILLIAM BAINS, GERALD BISHOP, BOB DAY, ALUN HARRIES, JOY HIBBERT: "Got a cutting from the Radio Times about a performance by the 'well-known counter-tenor Kevin Smith'." STEVE McDONALD, JONATHAN PALFREY: "British writers have the tendency of retreating into enigma, because, I suspect, they often lack the ability to write a good, straightforward story." (Damn right! Any layabout could toss off THE MAGUS or FINNEGANS WAKE but it takes real ability to craft a book for Del Rey.) DAVID REDD: "Think again before dismissing Jack Chalker!" (I did, I did.... DRL) PETER SINGLETON, STEVE SNEYD: "'Mainstream' is merely a subset/ aberration of the millennial epic/SF tradition ..." (Mainstream is a subset of the whole of literature, and its form, the novel, was rather different from the forms of literature that had preceded it, among which we must include the "epic" and among which we cannot include SF. Thematically, too, mainstream is closer to the tradition of literature than is SF. SF developed from the mainstream, and its proponents would be better advised to argue its merits on the grounds of the new things it can do, than on spurious proofs of its better historical connections. KJS) PHIL STEPHENSEN-PAYNE: "I trust you've learnt your lesson and won't give Joe a column unless his standard bucks up rather a lot." (Both editors quite liked THE FADED SUN: KESRITH, but Joe's other comments this time seem valid to us. Besides, the space needed filling.... DRL) KEVIN TYLER, ROGER WADDINGTON and doubtless quite a few others mislaid for the usual reasons. If only those readers who failed to respond could be made to remit guilty apologies to those letter-writers whose letters we mislaid, a great deal of effort on both editors' parts could be saved.
Afterthoughts
The illustration on page 2 is not of the editor after reading 3 paragraphs of House of Zeor without his 11 foot pole, but it might as well be. § The other editor also took his 11 foot pole to the book and was interested to note that while Sime tentacles are described within as pearly grey things, the cover artist has seen their inner significance and depicts them as wet, red and glistening. Personally, the editors doubt such explicitness should appear on public bookstands. § Both also deny responsibility for the deplorible spelling on the back cover. This is what happens when you let artists draw words as well. § "OK Dave, start the duplicator...."