174 lines
9.3 KiB
Plaintext
174 lines
9.3 KiB
Plaintext
$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0 CHEAP TRUTH ONE $0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0
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EDITORIAL: Hi. You want to know the truth. We want to tell it to you.
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Let's try to keep the ECONOMICS between us to a minimum, okay? Right, let's
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do it.
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** QUEST FOR DECAY **
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As American SF lies in a reptilian torpor, its small, squishy cousin,
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Fantasy, creeps gecko-like across the bookstands. Dreaming of dragon-hood,
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Fantasy has puffed itself up with air like a Mojave chuckwalla. SF's
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collapse had formed a vacuum that forces Fantasy into a painful and explosive
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bloat.
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Short stories, crippled with the bends, expand into whole hideous
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trilogies as hollow as nickel gumballs. Even poor Stephen Donaldson, who
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struggles to atone for his literary crimes with wet hippy sincerity, has been
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forced to re-xerox his Tolkien pastiches and doubly insult the public. As
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Robert E. Howard spins in his grave, the Chryslers of publishing attach
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rotors to his head and feet and use him to power the presses.
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But the editors have eaten sour grapes and the writers' teeth are on
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edge. Fantasy, for too long the vapid playground of McCaffreyite
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unicorn-cuddlers and insect-eating SCA freaks, has some new and dangerous
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borderlands. Suddenly, perhaps out of sheer frustration, fantasy has
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movement and color again. It is the squirming movement of corruption and the
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bright sheen of decay.
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** Some Examples **
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NIFFT THE LEAN by Michael Shea. DAW, $2.95. Jack Vance's acolyte,
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author of the apprentice work QUEST FOR SIMBILIS, Shea has suddenly and
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fearsomely come into his own. This astonishing work shows a furious
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imaginative concentration that is impressive and even appalling. The
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legitimate heir of Vance, Leiber, and Clark Ashton Smith, Shea rips aside the
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polite, smirking ironies of these polished writers and shows us a crawling,
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boiling vision of the demonic. He is a Fender Stratocaster to Vance's
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Stradivarius.
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For those familiar with Vance's work, the effect is odd and
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disquieting, like seeing a favorite uncle stumble in, blasted on bad acid and
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mumbling cosmis obscenities. There are supernatural horrors here that make
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Cthulhu and his boys look as tame as pinstriped bankers. Hell itself, its
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denizens and environs, are captured with a revolting nicety of detail and
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expression that makes you wonder for the author's sanity.
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Shea is doing for the outworn tradition of heroic fantasy what
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Swinburne did for the tradition of romantic poetry: namely, piling it up in
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a heap and setting it on fire. And, like Swinburne, he does it with so much
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insight that he renders the tradition obsolete. Heroic fantasy is already
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moribund; Shea's book is, strictly speaking, a work of decadence, even of
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necromancy. This is an important, even crucial book, with the lurid
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brilliance and craftsmanlike discipline of a Bosch canvas. Not to be missed.
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RED AS BLOOD by Tanith Lee. DAW, $2.50. The morbid smirk of the
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stereotyped fantasy damsel on the Michael Whelan cover of this book
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personifies fantasy's new decadence. Lee's talent has always threatened to
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overwhelm the narrow limits of her innumerable cape-and-thick-ankles
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bodice-busters, and this time she has the bit between her teeth and takes off
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for parts unknown.
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She has returned to fantasy's roots -- the 4/4 beat of Grimm's fairy
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tales -- and ripped it up in a way that Ramones fans might find eerily
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familiar. This is a very punk book -- all red and black -- and it has some
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of the end-of-the-world energy of a '77 Pistols gig. These stories are
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TWISTED -- tales of bloodlust, sexual frustration, schoolgirl nastiness,
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world-devouring ennui, and a detailed obsession with Satanism that truly
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makes one wonder.
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Casual readers may find some of these stories dense and opaque.
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Lee's prose has a cryptic, involuted quality, which creates the impression
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that she is hinting at matters too blasphemous to speak of openly. It's a
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peculiar style, alternately annoying and frightening.
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Some of this apparent awkwardness is the result of a refusal to
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compromise. It is the sign of an artist struggling to explian her visions in
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what amounts to a private dialect. Even the failures are a left-handed
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tribute to her integrity. She is uniquely gifted.
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If you are the kind of fan who wants to have a dragon for a friend
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and loves small furry animals, stay away from this book, because you might
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die from it.
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LYONESSE by Jack Vance. Berkley, $6.95. This latest effort has all
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the qualities Vance devotees cherish: vivid clarity in description, clever,
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colorful protagonists, fully realized societies complete with Vance's
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trademark footnotes, and headlong, exciting plotting that has footloose
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freedom without becoming slipshod.
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It's true that Vance has only one voice: a carefully crafted,
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mock-archaic one. Vance characters, from wizards to galactic effectuators,
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always speak with the same sense of antiquated, polite calculation. In
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LYONESSE, a pair of housecats are given the power of speech, and when they
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immediately pipe up with a uniquely Vancian courteous peevishness the
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effective is irresistably (and deliberately) hilarious. It's a voice that
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has served Vance well, and has even been borrowed wholesale by Michael Shea
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without becoming tiresome.
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Vance's works have always had a veiled darker side; they are replete
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with wine-sipping perverts whose sidelong glances and polite insinuations
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hint at unspeakable vices. Vance is a writer of rare perception; although he
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created many of the parameters of modern fantasy, he is clearly aware of
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their exhaustion. His answer, like Shea's, is to turn up the amps.
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Thus we have a female character whose suffering innocence almost
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reminds one of deSade's Justine. There is a definite, quiet cruelty in this
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book that is presented with an alarming sense of relish. Characters are
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blinded, tortured, branded, buggered, thrown into wells and left to die.
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Women and children especially are singled out for torment; one long section
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is a Tanith Lee-esque black fairy tale, and its peculiar viciousness is
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cynically funny. At last Vance even turns on the reader, for the book's
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ending is a cruel joke. It hints at books to follow, but since Vance's
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languorous attitude toward sequels is legendary, his audience is probably
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doomed to a long session on the tenterhooks.
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THE FLOATING GODS by M. John Harrison. Timescape, $2.50. This book
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is called IN VIRICONIUM in Britain, but was stupidly retitled for American
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release, presumably because Timescape believes we are boneheads. It's the
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third book in a sword-and-sorcery trilogy that includes THE PASTEL CITY and A
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STORM OF WINGS.
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It's clear that a different but allied form of decadence has struck
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Across the Water. Its trademark is not perversion, but exhaustion. PASTEL
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CITY rejoiced in such sprightly characters as Tomb, "the nastiest dwarf that
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ever hacked the hands off a priest," whose rotten malevolence was a welcome
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relief from Harrison's sometimes stifling meditations on spiritual decline.
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FLOATING GODS has no such characters. It is set in a city smothered
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under a nebulous Plague Zone. Possibly Harrison has spent too much time in
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Brixton. Despair seems to have been printed across his eyeballs in letters
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of fire. THE FLOATING GODS is a relentless exercise in total, stifling
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futility; it is one long, gray, debilitating dream.
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Harrison's extraordinary talent merely crams the reader's head more
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firmly into the bucket. It is impossible to read this book without
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considering suicide. It is painful to read; painful even to think about.
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Let's hope to God something happens soon to cheer him up.
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$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0 CHEAP TRUTH TOP TEN $0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0$0
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These new editions are readily available at your local
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smokestack-industry chainstore bookstand. You could do a lot
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worse.
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1. SOFTWARE Rudy Rucker. Ace, 2.25. Pyrotechnic work by deranged math
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professor. The hottest thing going in contemporary SF.
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2. UNIVERSE 10 Terry Carr, ed. Zebra, 2.50. Fine anthology reduced to utter
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penury. Should be bought for the good of the genre.
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3. PAST MASTER R. A. Lafferty. Ace, 2.50. Classic Lafferty. His most
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decipherable SF novel.
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4. THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS Ursula K. LeGuin. Brilliant LeGuin from her
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pre-didactic era. Has modern intro with words like "semiotic" and
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"positivist."
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5. THE IRON DREAM Norman Spinrad. Timescape, 2.95. Biting parody of
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fascistic SF power fantasies. Genuinely bizarre.
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6. THE MONSTER OF THE PROPHECY Clark Ashton Smith. Timescape, 2.50. Curious
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archaeological relic from the Golden Age. Outrageous, clotted prose.
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7. THE KING IN YELLOW Robert W. Chambers. Ace, 2.50. What fantasy was like
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before its prostitution.
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8. A WORLD OUT OF TIME Larry Niven. Del Rey, 2.50. Heartening indication
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that Niven may escape total artistic collapse.
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9. CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS Roger Zelazny. Avon, 2.25.
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Self-indulgent pastiche of his best work. Flashes of brilliance. Beats
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being smothered in amber.
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10. ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK Mike McQuay. Bantam, 2.50. Surprisingly decent
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novelization. Makes more sense than the
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movie.
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CHEAP TRUTH On-Line, 809-C West 12th Street, Austin, Texas 78701. Editing:
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Vincent Omniaveritas. NOT COPYRIGHTED. Data pirates, start your engines!
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"SERVING SF THROUGH SAMIZDATA"
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