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192 lines
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0$$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0 CHEAP TRUTH 4 $0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0
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EDITORIAL. This issue heads for the fringes of SF with nonfiction books,
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comics, and, perhaps least central of all, the plans of publishers. Future
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issues will include reviews of periodicals in "Squirming Mags" and a semiotic
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analysis of science fiction in rock videos.
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Mr. Augean Stapledon, a third-eyed tuatara of the first water, offers us the
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following REPTILE NEWS:
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I started with the intention of writing something about Isaac
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Asimov's ROBOTS OF DAWN. And then I thought, why do you want to do that?
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That old hack isn't the problem. Just another guy resurrecting the decaying
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flesh of ideas, plots, and characters dead thirty years now, pumping in a
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little '80's topicality (lame sex), and grabbing himself a whole bunch of
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money and a chrome rocket. What the hell? You give a guy a license to
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steal, you've got to expect him to use it.
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But who gave him the license? That's better, more to the point.
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First, though, look further. An endless stream of Dune books, leper
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books, Riverworld books, 2010-and-counting books, Majipoor books, magic blue
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horse books.... help me, Jesus, I can't do it by myself.
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It can't be the books. Most are unreadable, some merely boring, and
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a few achieve the exalted status of a well-prepared cheeseburger.
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SF used to be solely the province of the visionary and/or deranged.
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Its writers could count on, at best, a living wage -- along with, of course,
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the warm admiration of thousands of the isomorphically visionary/deranged,
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for whatever it was worth. This was not a good thing. Philip Dick ate pet
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food; others committed suicide, said the hell with it, or lived lives of
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constant despair. Name your poison. But the crazed were allowed to flourish
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in their own peculiar way, and the results were, now and then, amazing.
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So by all means bring SF onto center stage and give it a shot at the
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Big Time: New York Times Best Seller Lists, mighty advances, fancy covers,
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seven-piece supermarket dump bins.
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But don't take a razor to the hamstrings and then say, "Go on, get
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out there, buddy, and run with the best." Don't, in short, isolate the
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Dune-leper-magic blue horse&c. books as quintessential SF and ignore
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everything else. But this is, of course, precisely what mainstream corporate
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publishing does.
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Meanwhile, back at Waldenbooks, they're honing the SF section -- you
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know, stripping it down to the 'essentials' ... and Waldenbooks are spreading
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exponentially, in more disgusting fashion than any monster SF ever dreamed
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up, while the publishers are reading the writing on the shopping center walls
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-- which says nothing about being weighed in the balance and found wanting --
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and following along.
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There was a hint at the end of ROBOTS OF DAWN that Asimov might tie
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the ROBOT books and the FOUNDATION books together. Imagine that.
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INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, my ass. Why bother?
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CHEAP TRUTH TOP TEN (Nonfiction special)
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This issue's expanded Top Ten extols works of visionary nonfiction, along
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with lighter pieces to stanch the flow of blood from nose and ears.
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THE WORLD, THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL by J. D. Bernal. In the 1920's this
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visionary English scientist, his mind inflamed by what he conceived to be the
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imminent triumph of World Socialism, reinvented the nature of the human
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future. To read this book is to marvel over what science fiction might have
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been if Hugo Gernsback had not misled the genre. A work of staggering
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daring, utterly lacking in comfortable bullshit.
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DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE by Freeman Dyson. The great physicist-visionary of
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the Orion Project explores the implications of man's role in the cosmos and
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the simple warmth of human life. A sad, wise, hopeful book.
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THE THIRD WAVE by Alvin Toffler. Former Marxist Toffler had his paradigms
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set early; he aims to be the Marx of the twenty-first century, only this time
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it'll be done right. A brilliant conceptual framework for seeing emergent
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order in the confusion of our times, deliberately pop-oriented and slanted as
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a polemic for action. Echoes of his rhetoric are already apparent in many
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politicians' sudden romance with high-tech industry. Must-reading for anyone
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whose head is not in a bucket.
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THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA by Joel Garreau. Fascinating social
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analysis of the geographical subcultures of the continent. Floods the mind
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with insight. If you ever wondered why Californians are crazy, this is the
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book for you.
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THE NEW SOLAR SYSTEM, Beatty, O'Leary, and Chaikin, eds. Mind-expanding
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compendium of the discoveries garnered from unmanned planetary exploration.
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Consigns whole reams of musty space opera to the ash-heap.
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INFINITY AND THE MIND by Rudy Rucker. Mathematically rigorous treatment of
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the ultimate in mind-stretching concepts, drawn from the warped pen of the
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transrealist Seer of Lynchburg. Like being hit in the head by a bowling
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ball.
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NEW EARTHS by James Oberg. NASA technician Oberg tackles terraforming in
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this series of technical studies prefaced by SF vignettes. With his two
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other books, RED STAR IN ORBIT and MISSION TO MARS, Oberg has established
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himself as a cornucopia of cribbable data for SF writers. Worth its weight
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in reaction mass.
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A HOUSE IN SPACE by Henry S.F. Cooper, Jr. The definitive book on Skylab,
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the real lowdown on what it's like to live in freefall. A treasure-house of
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weird sidelights and bizarre detail. Refreshingly free of paramilitary NASA
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tripe.
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THE PSYCHOTRONIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM by Michael Weldon. A monument of
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bizarrist cinematic trash. The reader's preconceptions crumble under a
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blizzard of the worthless and deranged. Seems to include every sleazoid SF
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flick ever inflicted on the world, along with countless teens-on-drugs
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flicks, beach movies, and ax-butcher epics. Unbelievably thorough and
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convulsively hilarious. Deserves a place of honor on the reference shelf of
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every cultural mutant.
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DREAM MAKERS VOLUME II by Charles Platt. More painful frankness from Platt,
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who has a genius for showing up others' eccentricities as if he himself were
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sane. Low-key, utterly convincing demonstrations of the manifold nature of
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psychic damage. In its portraits of the competition, this is perhaps one of
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the most cheering books that a would-be science fiction writer could possibly
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possess. For those already damaged beyond all hope, it provides irresistible
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frissons of warm camaraderie. Meticulous journalism with an eye for the
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absurd.
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Man-about-graphics Bolt Upright lends us the benefit of his expertise:
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My father used to buy me comic books. The reward for enduring a
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monthly scalping at the hands of the ex-Nazis who ran the local barbershop --
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Heinz and Willy, the barbers of Belsen. It wasn't a fair trade. Dad got a
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son with a burr, and I got the world's greatest comic magazine; and more. I
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mean, yeah, OK, astronauts are astronauts if you're a kid and have a hero
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jones, but here's what I really needed: this guy Reed Richards, a mad
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scientist in the worst way, takes his girlfriend (Tuesday Weld in MY movie
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version), her kid brother, and a possibly deranged test pilot for a joyride
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in an experimental rocket. Not only do they get away with it, they end up
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with these incredible super powers.
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Ben Grimm's incessant whining used to really chap my ass. Who was he
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kidding? I would have gladly taken lumpy orange skin, cartoon mouse hand and
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foot digit allotment, and who-knows-what-kind of genitalia for the ability to
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crush cheap essential scenery like papier-mache.
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And, not to neglect the world's second greatest comic magazine, I
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watched spiders constantly for that tell-tale glow of radioactivity.
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When I was a child, I read comic books as a child; but when I became
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a man, I put away childish things, and bought the first six issues of
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AMERICAN FLAGG!, the world's greatest comic magazine.
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Steranko's NICK FURY, AGENT OF SHIELD was the first comic that made
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me see the form as form, and the artist as auteur; MR. A, written and drawn
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by Steve Ditko, as bizarre and didactic as anything could possibly be,
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suggested nonetheless that fairly sophisticated ideological material might
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work in the comic book format; and more recently, the Frank Miller DAREDEVIL
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series with its fine balance of strong scripting, excellent art,
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well-developed characters, and the staples of entertainment, sex and
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violence, set a new high standard in the field.
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The field, represetned by Howard Chaykin and First Comics, responded
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immediately, and with such an amazing product that, after having read and
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re-read -- (when was the last time you wanted to re-read a comic book?) --
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the first three issues of AMERICAN FLAGG!, I had the peculiar feeling that
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this was the first real comic book I had ever owned. There are terrific
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characters (the protagonist is an ex-vidporn star), impeccable art (every
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issue has a suitable for framing, right-in-your-goddamn-face cover), a
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multi-layered, conspiracy-ridden, paranoid, balls-out story line, got
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politics if you want it, lettering you won't believe (by Ken Bruzenak), and
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whatever sex and violence you require, but never tawdry or gratuitous.
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In addition to all that stuff, AMERICAN FLAGG! is science fiction of
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a caliber that is almost impossible to find in comics and pretty scarce
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anywhere else. Yeah, there's hardware. Plenty of hardware. There's an
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adventure guy and his adventure girls, even talking animals with mechanical
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hands, but here's my point: good SF is a literature of ideas. The best
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science fiction builds a place for them to live. It's hard to imagine a
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denser, more intricate, cohesive creation that the world Chaykin constructs
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and populates in AMERICAN FLAGG. I used to ask myself, as the simplest way
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of judging a fictional creation, a future-world particularly, "Could it
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happen? Is this projected future reasonable?" I was on the wrong track.
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The question is, "DOES it happen?" In AMERICAN FLAGG, it happens.
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CHEAP TRUTH On-Line, 809-C West 12th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. Vincent
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Omniaveritas, editing. Shiva the Destroyer, systems operation. "The Truth
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Cannot Be Copyrighted"
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