Issue #109, September 1997

FEATURES

Joe Sanders: Re: Visions in Michael Bishop’s First and Seventh Novel: 1

E. B. Johnson: A Brief History of Alternate Fiction: 13

REVIEWS

Theodore Roszak’s The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, reviewed by Rob Latham: 1

K. W. Jeter’s Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human and Blade Runner: Replicant Night, reviewed by Joe Milicia: 6

Rachel Pollack’s Godmother Night, reviewed by Kathleen Ann Goonan: 12

Ian R. MacLeod’s The Great Wheel, reviewed by Gary Reger: 15

Louise Marley’s Sing the Warmth, reviewed by Michael M. Levy: 16

Robert Silverberg’s Reflections and Refractions: Thoughts on Science Fiction, Science and Other Matters, reviewed by Arthur D. Hlavaty: 17

Charles deLint’s Trader, reviewed by Bill Sheehan: 18

Patricia Anthony’s God’s Fires, reviewed by Greg Johnson: 19

Greg Egan’s Distress, reviewed by Michael M. Levy: 20

Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, reviewed by Kurt Roth: 21

PLUS
Reading Lists by M. John Harrison (p. 10) and Paul T. Riddell (p. 14), a cartoon by Joe Mayhew (p. 3), Screed (p. 22),
and an editorial (p. 24).

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The Tenth Anniversary Rag



Now we are set to plunge into our tenth year in a science fiction field continuing to grow and change. I alone of our staff attended LoneStarCon to represent NYRSF at the Hugo Ceremony on our ninth consecutive nomination, but we will continue to get around, and report back. Our next issue is already in production and the inventory for following issues is growing. We could, however, use an additional staff member willing to devote weekly and monthly time to working on the magazine, learn editing, stay up late, and swap stories. Computer skills and a background in reading a must. (Also helps if you like cats.) If you are interested, drop us a line.

And as we begin our tenth year of NYRSF, we want to welcome new subscribers, especially those members of the Science Fiction Research Association, many of whom are academics interested in sf, who have taken advantage of our discounted rates available to members and begun to receive our magazine. One of our agendas over the years has been to keep the divide, between the academic study and criticism of sf and the tradition of in-field reviewing and criticism according to the standards of generations of committed readers and writers, from growing wider in our time. We are pleased to number among our NYRSF writers many well-read and thoughtful academics (note the pieces by Joe Sanders and Rob Latham on page one of this issue), and many of the finest sf pro critics, such as John Clute, Samuel R. Delany, Brian Stableford, and Damien Broderick. We mourn the passing of George Turner last spring, who was unable to write more for us in recent years due to illness. We also welcome personal essays about sf.

We believe sf is a living field and a living literature, that knowledge of both the field’s culture and the written work are essential to criticism, and that a position on literary politics, an aesthetic agenda, is the essence of a good magazine. Many editors read and discuss the individual essays and reviews before we publish them, and we attempt to edit each piece to high standards of clarity and accuracy, and to encourage every writer to consider the wider context of individual works and writers. We also believe that to reveal the pleasures of the text is a primary value in reviewing, and encourage our reviewers to investigate the strengths and weakness of good books. We make no attempt to exclude older books, or to be obsessed with the new merely because it is new.

We have been breaking even doing this for nine years now and the future looks bright. Our only regret is that we cannot take credit cards to help out our foreign subscribers. The cost to us is too high, given the small number of transactions we would expect in a year (not even one a day—certainly not hundreds a week—and the monthly and annual charges would break us). We are still working on other ideas though, of which the SFRA discount is only one.

So here we are, new again, and ready to dance.

—David G. Hartwell & the editors