Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (437 page)

I had concluded that my life was not destined to be all I would like it to be. We all make some sort of compromise, I reasoned, and if you set your expectations too high you are doomed to disappointment. It did occur to me that I was settling for something far from “high,” but I didn’t know what to do about it. I carried on with a mixture of cynicism and optimism that seemed about the right mix for me. It kept my motor running, anyway.

I even made it to Japan, as I had intended in the first place.

I didn’t find someone to share my life. There was only Pink for that, Pink and all her family, and we were separated by a gulf I didn’t dare cross. I didn’t even dare think about her too much. It would have been very dangerous to my equilibrium. I lived with it, and told myself that it was the way I was. Lonely.

The years rolled on like a caterpillar tractor at Dachau, up to the penultimate day of the millennium.

San Francisco was having a big bash to celebrate the year 2000. Who gives a shit that the city is slowly falling apart, that civilization is disintegrating into hysteria? Let’s have a party!

I stood on the Golden Gate Dam on the last day of 1999 The sun was setting in the Pacific, on Japan, which had turned out to be more of the same but squared and cubed with neo-samurai. Behind me the first bombshells of a firework celebration of holocaust tricked up to look like festivity competed with the flare of burning buildings as the social and economic basket cases celebrated the occasion in their own way. The city quivered under the weight of misery, anxious to slide off along the fracture lines of some sub-cortical San Andrews Fault. Orbiting atomic bombs twinkled in my mind, up there somewhere, ready to plant mushrooms when we’d exhausted all the other possibilities.

I thought of Pink.

I found myself speeding through the Nevada desert, sweating, gripping the steering wheel. I was crying aloud but without sound, as I had learned to do at Keller.

Can you go back?

* * * *

I slammed the citicar over the potholes in the dirt road. The car was falling apart. It was not built for this kind of travel. The sky was getting light in the east. It was the dawn of a new millennium. I stepped harder on the gas pedal and the car bucked savagely. I didn’t care. I was not driving back down that road, not ever. One way or another, I was here to stay.

I reached the wall and sobbed my relief. The last hundred miles had been a nightmare of wondering if it had been a dream. I touched the cold reality of the wall and it calmed me. Light snow had drifted over everything, grey in the early dawn.

I saw them in the distance. All of them, out in the field where I had left them. No, I was wrong. It was only the children. Why had it seemed like so many at first?

Pink was there. I knew her immediately, though I had never seen her in winter clothes. She was taller, filled out. She would be nineteen years old. There was a small child playing in the snow at her feet, and she cradled an infant in her arms. I went to her and talked to her hand.

She turned to me, her face radiant with welcome, her eyes staring in a way I had never seen. Her hands flitted over me and her eyes did not move.

“I touch you, I welcome you,” her hands said. “I wish you could have been here just a few minutes ago. Why did you go away, darling? Why did you stay away so long?” Her eyes were stones in her head. She was blind. She was deaf.

All the children were. No, Pink’s child sitting at my feet looked up at me with a smile.

“Where is everybody?” I asked when I got my breath. “Scar? Baldy? Green-eyes? And what’s happened? What’s happened to you?” I was tottering on the edge of a heart attack or nervous collapse or something. My reality felt in danger of dissolving.

“They’ve gone,” she said. The word eluded me, but the context put it with the
Mary Celeste
and Roanoke, Virginia. It was complex, the way she used the word
gone.
It was like something she had said before: unattainable, a source of frustration like the one that had sent me running from Keller. But now her word told of something that was not hers yet, but was within her grasp. There was no sadness in it.

“Gone?”

“Yes. I don’t know where. They’re happy. They ***ed. It was glorious. We could only touch a part of it.”

I felt my heart hammering to the sound of the last train pulling away from the station. My feet were pounding along the ties as it faded into the fog. Where are the Brigadoons of yesterday? I’ve never yet heard of a fairy tale where you can go back to the land of enchantment. You wake up, you find that your chance is gone. You threw it away.
Fool!
You only get one chance; that’s the moral, isn’t it?

Pink’s hands laughed along my face.

“Hold this part-of-me-who-speaks-mouth-to-nipple,” she said, and handed me her infant daughter. “I will give you a gift.”

She reached up and lightly touched my ears with her cold fingers. The sound of the wind was shut out, and when her hands came away it never came back. She touched my eyes, shut out all the light, and I saw no more.

We live in the lovely quiet and dark.

* * * *

Copyright © 1978 by Mercury Press, Inc.

Industry news, trade journals, inside information: every field of endeavor and business has its own, and speculative fiction is no different. But where speculative fiction may differ from the rest is in the sense of community it engenders, both in its practitioners and its fans.

So, while
Variety
focuses exclusively on the business of film, leaving the gossip and personal news to the general circulation magazines like
Entertainment Weekly
, in SF, our news sources combine both aspects.

The SF community made its first appearance in the letter columns of the early SF pulp magazines, where discussions of the stories lead to the formation of in-person fan clubs. And soon thereafter came the first fanzine (fan-published magazine), called
The Comet
, which, according to Bob Tucker’s
The Neo-Fan’s Guide
(1955) was published during the birth of fandom in 1930. Soon after that came the first newszines, which were small and fairly frequent fanzines containing news of SF and fandom.

Newszines broke out of their fanzine home, becoming full-fledged news magazines, starting in the 1960s, with
Algol
and
Locus
.

Andrew I. Porter published
Algol: The Magazine About Science Fiction
from 1963 to 1984 (he changed its name to
Starship
in 1979).

In 1968, to support the 1971 Boston WorldCon bid, a group of fans started
Locus
. The magazine outlived its initial raison d’etre, and one of the co-founders, Charles N. Brown, took over the whole operation, publishing it as “The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field” until his death in 2009, when Liza Groen Trombi took over as publisher. Though production methods have evolved, the magazine’s content has remained fairly consistent: some brief news articles about the SF fields, a few longer pieces, one or two interviews, and a lot of book reviews. The magazine is published monthly.

In 1979, Porter started
Science Fiction Chronicle
, which grew to emulate
Locus
, though with a greater proportion of news to reviews. The main difference between the two was the much larger staff running
Locus
, keeping it a professional (though low-circulation) publication, while Porter’s nearly one-man operation eventually fell victim to the vicissitudes of his personal life, having difficulty keeping to its supposed monthly schedule. In 2000, he sold it to DNA Publications, and parted ways with the magazine and company two years later.
SFC
continued until 2006, when it was shut down, along with most of DNA’s other projects.

Also in 1979, British fan David Langford started publishing
Ansible
. It ran until 1987, and then Langford relaunched in 1991. This monthly newszine also appears online, with all of its back issues also freely available from its website, http://news.ansible.co.uk/Ansible.html.

In 1997,
Locus
launched its online version, www.locusmag.com, which at first mimicked the print magazine’s news format. But publishing the news for free endangered the print magazine’s viability, and the amount of news appearing on the site dropped off. Both the print and electronic versions continue today.

While
Locus
may have damaged the market for print SF news magazines with its online appearance, it also paved the way for other online newszines. For instance, I was the last News Editor of
Science Fiction Chronicle
, and after the magazine’s demise, I took my news gathering and dissemination efforts on-line with
SFScope
(www.SFScope.com), reasoning that a monthly print magazine has a lead-time of two months (fine for fiction), while an electronic magazine has a lead-time of two hours (much better for news). One of the web’s prime purposes is the role of an instant newspaper, whether general interest or specific.

There are currently several respected, long-running SF newszines online, some set up as websites and others as blogs. In addition to
Locus
,
Ansible
, and
SFScope
, Steven H Silver is the editor and reporter for
SFSite
’s news page (www.SFSite.com/News). John DeNardo and JP Frantz (with a large and growing list of “Irregulars”) produce
SFSignal
(www.SFSignal.com). Stephen Hunt’s
SFCrowsnest
(www.SFCrowsNest.com) is a British-based monthly that started life in print, though editor Geoff Willmetts now says the site’s most popular section is its search engine.

Every publisher (both the majors and the small presses) has its own website and blog, talking about their productions. Some of them are trying to expand beyond the confines of their own houses. Most notably, Tor Books (www.Tor.com), which was launched as a “community”, but also carries news.

Finally, as it is the age of mass two-way communication on the internet, just about every author has his own web site or blog as well. A quick web search will take you to the correct page, assuming you haven’t already found it in the author’s latest book.

Where the newszines and sites excel is in giving an overview of the industry. For the beginning writer, they offer market reports, lists of books sold (frequently with the agents’ and editors’ names, to give the beginning writer some pointers for their own marketing efforts), news of writing contests, awards, the bookselling business, and more. For the reader, there’s news of your favorite author’s latest plans, personal news they care to share with the public, and more. Most of the zines and sites also offer some media (film and television) news, and all of them have reviews (books, films, television, comics, and more).

SF news magazines:

Locus Magazine
($34 for six monthly issues, $60 for twelve; P.O. Box 13305, Oakland CA 94661). Monthly magazine (70-100) pages, a typical issue contains two interviews with authors and/or artists, a feature article, four pages of brief news items, four pages of longer news stories, lists of books and magazines received, obituaries, and ten review columns covering about forty books.

Locus Magazine Online
(www.LocusMag.com). Posts three–five news stories per week (updates almost daily), reprints review, opinion, and listing pieces from the print magazine, offers links to other sites. Maintains online databases of awards and the Locus Index to Science Fiction.

SFScope
(www.SFScope.com). Posts 15–40 news stories and reviews per week (updates daily), archives all old pieces (searchable). Focus on written fiction, with news on book sales, publisher and author activities, obituaries, listings, reviews of books, films, and television programs, and more.

SF Site
(www.SFSite.com/news).
SF Site
is a monthly electronic review zine (news updates almost daily). It hosts a news column which posts 10–15 news stories per week, including book sales, obituaries, awards news, and more.

SF Signal
(www.SFSignal.com). News aggregator site (updates daily). Daily posts include links to interviews, news, feature articles, art, and “more fun stuff.” Also publishes original reviews and a regular podcast.

SF Crowsnest
(www.SFCrowsnest.com). Publishes about 20 features stories per month (updates monthly). Mostly opinion and review pieces. Occasional news articles.

Ansible
(http://news.Ansible.co.uk/Ansible.html). Publishes one issue per month (updates monthly). Issues include author news, convention listings, award news, obituaries, fannish news (mostly UK), and commentaries on the public perception of sf.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (www.SFWA.org). Publishes occasional news pieces, mostly focusing on the activities of the organization’s members. Also has feature articles on the craft and business of writing.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi) is just what it sounds like. Good reference source.

Publishers whose websites have more than just marketing for their own books:

Del Rey/Spectra (Random House): www.suvudu.com

Juno Books: http://juno-books.com/blog

Pyr: www.PyrSF.com/blogpage.html

Tor Books: www.tor.com

Non-genre specific news sites of interest:

Publishers Lunch: www.PublishersMarketplace.com/lunch/free

Publishers Weekly: www.PublishersWeekly.com

* * * *

Ian Randal Strock
is the editor and publisher of SFScope.com, and the publisher of Fantastic Books (www.FantasticBooks.biz). He is also a writer of science fiction and nonfiction. Random House’s Villard imprint published his first book, the nonfiction The Presidential Book of Lists: from Most to Least, Elected to Rejected, Worst to Cursed—Fascinating Facts About Our Chief Executives in 2008.