The New York Review of Science Fiction

ISSUE #242 October 2008

ISSUE #242 October 2008

Volume 21, No. 2 ISSN #1052-9438

ESSAYS

Michael Swanwick: A Dizzy Celebration of Being Somewhere Wonderful: Reading Rhetorics of Fantasy in the Real World: 1

John Clute: Physics for Amnesia: Horror Motifs in SF: 1

Brian Stableford: The Martian Mummy of 1864: 13

Jason Sanford: Singing the Songs of Arthur C. Clarke’s Distant Earth: 18

REVIEWS

Adam Roberts’s Swiftly, reviewed by Niall Harrison: 11

Joanna Russ’s The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews, reviewed by Henry Wessells: 16

David Levy’s Love + Sex with Robots, reviewed by Robert Bee: 20

Robert A. Heinlein’s Time for the Stars, reviewed by Ben Blattberg: 22

PLUS

Plus: Picking at a good book (6); Anticipation: Call for Papers (10); Karl Schroeder’s science reading list (17); and an editorial (24).

 

Kathryn Cramer, Art and Web Site Editor; Samuel R. Delany, Contributing Editor; Kris Dikeman, Associate Managing Editor.

David G. Hartwell, Reviews and Features Editor; Kevin J. Maroney, Managing Editor.

Work Weekend Staff: Arthur D. Hlavaty and Anne Zanoni.

Weekly Meeting Staff: Avram Grumer,  Lisa Padol, and Christine Quiñones.

Special thanks to: Ben Blattberg, 

Published monthly by Dragon Press, P.O. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570.

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Copyright © 2008 Dragon Press.

Hurricane Season

From NYRSF ISSUE #242 October 2008

Once again it is September, and we have produced this issue during the rains and wind of Hurricane Hanna (well, Tropical Storm Hanna, now). Most of the staff had to stay home, but we persevered and triumphed over adversity, as usual. For those of you who have been following our editorials about our computers for years, this is another of those moments. The adversity was not the storm, but the failure of the logic board on Singularity, Kathryn’s Mac G5, early in the week, requiring the sudden purchase of a new machine. (“Oh, those boards fail in four years or so on those G5s,” said Tekserve.) The as-yet unnamed machine performed admirably well for layout, and Singularity should be up and running as the NYRSF production computer next month.

At Denvention, which I attended without family (though most of the NYRSF Weekly Meeting staff were present), we once again lost the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine to Locus. I then discovered that a rules change passed that, if ratified at the Worldcon business meeting next year in Montreal, will eliminate the Best Semiprozine category. This would prevent us from being eligible for a Hugo again unless we were to make a couple of changes to declare ourselves a fanzine. We would rather not do that; we are great admirers of the traditional fanzines, but we do not consider ourselves as within that tradition. We think that the hybrid category we currently inhabit is valuable. It seems to us that the elimination of the category is the result of fatigue on the part of people who care about the Worldcon and Hugos with giving the award to Locus so many times. Rather than face this directly, by say limiting the number of consecutive awards that can be won in this category to two, or three—or in fact no consecutive awards in this category (which is what for instance the World Fantasy Awards do with several categories), or limiting the number of awards that any publication can win to three, ever, or in twenty years, or something fairly reasonable—the particular smofs assembled apparently just decided to punt. I suppose I should recommend attending the business meeting at Anticipation next August, if you care about this. I’ll be there.

Meanwhile, I did win a Hugo Award myself for Best Editor (Long Form), and there’s a picture of it wearing my tie and jacket on page 23.

Aside from Denvention, Kathryn and I went to Montreal over Labor Day weekend to Farthing Party (see picture on page 23). This is charming small con, chaired by Jo Walton, with two full days of generally excellent programming and intense discussion. I was particularly pleased to have no real problems at the border, since I left my luggage and passport home in the rush to depart—I was lucky to be traveling with my wife and children. We like Canada.

This week we are having our twentieth anniversary reading in NYC and are proceeding to move on in our twenty-first year. We are looking forward to strange times. 

—David G. Hartwell

& the editors