K18

---

K18, an APAzine for Pieces of Eight, Oct. '91, from A. Vincent Clarke, 16 Wendover Way, Welling, Kent, DA16 2BN."One of the things that has been troubling me is that I think realism is essentially a kind of elite, highbrow writing that appeals to people whose lives are very comfortable, for whom reality is a very pleasant thing "David Morrell, INTERZONE 51

---

ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE

The premise is odd enough – in an alternate America whose physics may well be based on the Neoplatonic shamanism of the Crowley who read Frances Yates and wrote Aegypt, a redemptive Pregnancy has been imposed upon the unwilling woman at the heart of the tale – but the eerie hypnopompic tranced serenity of Pollack's telling of her story, and the medusoid cruelty of the exemplary fables she interweaves into the text, make reading Unquenchable Fire almost like having a nightmare".

So does reading some sf reviews. This example of the higher criticism is taken from John Clute's 14 pages of reviews in Orbit Science Fiction Yearbook No.2, and makes me wonder at his motive. Is he really doing his best to compress his understanding of a story into as little space as possible, or is he, in common parlance, 'showing off'?

He must surely know that a vanishingly small percentage of his readers could plough through 14 pages of the above without resorting to the dictionary. Does he regard the reviews as educative processes? I would have thought that the slightest trace of common sense would have told him that a flow of writing which must be constantly interrupted while the reader ponders over the meaning resolves itself into a communication problem, not an honest-to-God assessment of a story.

And I'm not too sure of some of his flights of fancy, either. Medusoid cruelty? I always thought that Medusa was just a lady who didn't use the proper shampoo – as advertised on TV – and changed her victims into stone without, as the phrase goes, turning a hair. And 'cruelty' surely involves pain and suffering, eg. child abuse. How this can be equated with telling fables is something that passeth understanding.

Any opinions?

DEPT. OF DIRE WARNINGS

There's not been much time between the post-mailing (which I trust you all received) and writing this, so nothing really world-shattering has happened. Our boy Kench sent in a load of stuff for forthcoming 'zines to be electro-stencilled, as did Eugene Doherty of Northern Ireland. The latter presented some difficulties, not so much because he seems to have scraped the barrel of underground 'zines and presented a sort of Readers Digest of adolescent oddities, (I don't think that the concept of a fanzine that can be re-read with enjoyment years later has ever crossed his mind), but because he pasted loads of cuttings and smaller pages onto A4 sheets.

I'm going to advise him, as I'm advising you, that I don't mind doing electro-stencilling for anyone, but when you carry out the aforementioned pasting it's almost inevitable that you get bubbles and creases. These, unfortunately, are picked up by the photo-electric cell in the machine and reproduce as patches of solid black. I've found the only solution is to copier the page first and e-s the copy, which is a nuisance as it puts another stage of reproduction in between the original and the eventual duplicated copy.

If you want to send copy to an electro-stenciller and there's paste-ups, just use a smidgin of adhesive on two corners to keep it in place, please!

READING

I don't suppose I'm telling you anything that you don't know already, but just in case – public libraries, however big a section they have devoted to sf, always slip up and relegate some of the hard stuff to the regular shelves. At the moment I have three books out, all of which are sf and none of them are marked as such, including The Fall of Hyperion...and you can't get much harder than that.

MINDSAIL, by Anne Gay (Orbit 1990) blurbs itself as A brilliant debut in the tradition of Ursula K. LeGuin. Even tho' the lady lives in Birmingham (Britain, not Alabama), and three cheers for home talent, I wouldn't echo that, but it's a reasonably interesting story, partly because you often come across something that shows that with a bit more experience she might indeed be worth watching – and reading.

Set in one of those worlds where the survivors of an Earth ship are trying to...er...survive in several kinds of society, it starts her heroine, a Cinderella figure, on a Quest, and interestingly enough ages her some years in the process. This bit of realism is swamped, however, by some awful inconsistencies – for instance, it's very hard to relate to a colony of two hundred thousand people who have the ability to 'mind-sail' over surrounding territory but don't know anything of their world.

And Ms. Gay doesn't wrap the story up, but leaves herself room for a sequel or three. Pity.

BOXING

As I write there's yet another fuss going on about a boxing casualty, and calls for boxing to be banned. This will probably be just a 3-day wonder (unless the guy dies, in which case it'll be a 5-day wonder), but it's curious to hear the excuses of the defenders of this barbarism.

Dr. Helen Grant was on the radio just now (23rd.) with a curious piece of information; the inside of the skull isn't smooth but has small protuberances, so that when the head's hit and the brain moves slightly in its surroundings (inertia and all that), it's likely to bruise itself against the inside of the rough skull. Interesting – one would have thought that evolution would have come into play and smoothed things out. I suppose there just haven't been that many people who have been battered about the head to make a difference.

COMMENTS ON SEPTEMBER '91 MAILING

A WHISPER FROM THE BILGES – Anon

Or so it seems. Unbecoming modesty, Ms. Spellman. Yes, the ranks are indeed thin, but it may be seasonal. I've mentioned the APA to two or three people, all of whom seem to be busy (or maybe they're just being polite), but I think that we should concentrate on the slightly isolated person – isolated mentally, physically or socially, I mean, not the inhabitant of some rock off-shore. Possibly our new Cap'n, when he gets the lace curtains up in his cabin and everything ship-shape, could initiate some sort of advert. on the lines I suggested some mailings ago – a sheet showing the topics already discussed to be sent to likely prospects.

Briskly efficient, Maureen.

BEFORE THE MAST BANDS – Ian Bambro

Sure you didn't mean bends, Ian? That's an interesting way of getting two columns, and a bit better than my method, but how do you manage such a good match across the columns? It's really excellent. I'm thinking vaguely of setting up a sheet on the back of the printer so that I can align each page, but laziness wins again – I'm sticking to ye olde scissors and dab of gumme for the present.

Grinned at your harking back to Chris's description of your stance during the Gulf War, and raised my eyebrows at your remarks directed to Theo, with which I disagree – if we can't manufacture ourselves out of trouble we might as well con. the tourists to come over and gape at Royalty and add to our revenue. I'm sure that we make more out of them than vice-versa, tho' I couldn't prove it. Who's got the figures? Looking forward to your career as a 'simple' crew member, ho ho.

Looking forward to reading the guide to copyright if and when. With this electro-stenciller I break the law on numerous occasions, my only defense being that the material would never be seen and appreciated if it wasn't reproduced here and, as you say, one would anticipate only 20 copies being done. When do drawings/cartoons go out of copyright?

General agreement with the rest of your remarks re. relations, dogs, charity shops, etc. I've always thought I had a Guardian-style liberal mind.

STRANGE DEBRIS – Chris Carne

I'm sorry to say, Chris, that Freudianism is now pretty suspect (seems he was a woman-hating man of his time who borrowed wholesale from some pretty weird people – one of his closest friends believed that all ills stemmed from the nose) and Relativity theory has been a useful tool but ..... The quotes are bit puzzling. Let's take the relatively modern view that the Earth is not the centre of the physical universe. From what you say Foucalt would say that this was said because behind it was a secret or treasure; Crowley would say that a claim of objective truth for text laying out the above is clearly 'untrue'.

I know that this is a simplification, but's that how your text reads. Would you amplify, or shall I go quietly away and read the primary texts?

As for your quiz on the Earth-bearing turtle, any question involving an infinite quantity is going to involve infinity. I pass.

Nice joke.

RYCT Kench re. his comment to Maureen (how long can this go on?) re. electric APAs. Someone in the latest PULP (not yet published, read while being electroed) points out that the brilliant Teresa Nielsen Hayden won a Hugo nomination for Best Fan Writer even tho' she had little in written fanzines – she did her latest stuff on computer bulletin boards. Looks as tho' we're coming on to another diversification of fannish fanzines – those who can afford to go 'on line' and those who can't. Oh well, carry on with the cheapest stuff available, Vinc.

RYCT me; Science & Sanity doesn't/didn't explain World of A but as you say, influenced it.

TO THE SHIRAKAWA GATE – Darroll Pardoe

Nice civilised stuff. RYC on bottles, no, there aren't many empty bottles around these premises, but there's jars – coffee, peanut-butter, marmalade, sauce, beetroot. Mainly, of course, I salvage paper.

Yes, I remember wartime salvage bins. Around the back of the cookhouse an unfortunate general-duties airman would be designated to cook meal remnants and skim the fat off the top. You've heard disillusioned people saying "The job stinks"? This one did – literally.

Re. query, 'fanzine' instead of 'fan magazine' was coined by US fan Louis Russell Chauvenet around '41 (THEN 1 p.27 and ALL OUR YESTERDAYS p.41). Oddly enough, Chauvenet, like our own Chuch Harris, was completely deaf, but he realised 'fanzine' was easier to say.