From: Damien Broderick (thespike@earthlink.net)
Date: Wed Dec 18 2002 - 12:52:16 MST
Charles Hixson wrote:
>it's a pity that the [Baen] selections are so restricted, but it's
> also easily understandable. In particular, I wish that he carried a
> large selection of out of print works, though I certainly understand the
> economic rationale for not doing so.
> But it's a shame that so many works languish unreprinted because of
> copyright restrictions. That does nobody any good.
A quite amazing hoard of old and recent sf is now available at
www.Fictionwise.com, usually quite cheaply. The writers get a heroic royalty
rate, three or four times what we'd earn for paper.
Some time back I recommended Poul Anderson's BRAIN WAVE, a short and flawed
but immensely interesting early novel (nearly half a century old now) about
brain augmentation on a planetary scale. It was out of print and hard to
find at 2nd hand stores, but now it's at F/wise at
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook8270.htm for four and a half bucks...
In case your suspicions are growing, no, I don't own stock in the company. I
do have a bunch of fiction on sale there, though, and next week I'll be
mentioning a long-lost book of mine when they release it.
But a funny thing happened on the way to-- Barbara Lamar recently posted a
mention here of the F/wise release of a novel by me and Rory Barnes. The
title given was AGAINST THE EMPIRE. That's a slightly revised version of an
unusual sf tale from 1983, VALENCIES. In the blurb for the novel, F/wise
used a citation from Russell Blackford describing the book in terms nobody
could mistake for a buoyant space opera, but still the thumbs-down voting by
early readers gave us all rather a shock. We decided maybe the new name had
given at least some browsers the mistaken idea that it was like a STAR WARS
or STAR TREK adventure. Actually, our characters are immortal denizens of an
empire that's glutted the entire universe by 4004 A.D., restricting
technology in the interests of power and stability. Transhuman in the
upbeat/uplift mode, therefore, it ain't... Quick-smart we reverted to the
earlier title, and added the following warning to the blurb (and I hope
nobody here was caught by that unintended trap):
=====
Authors' note: This revised edition was launched here in November 2002 under
its original working title, Against the Empire. We quickly found this change
misled some readers into expecting a rousing space opera in the tradition of
'Doc' Smith or Star Wars, so now we have reinstated the published title. A
word of caution, therefore: this book is not a military adventure yarn nor a
romance in deep space. What is it, then? Australian critic Van Ikin
comments: "... utopia is an elusive grail with a different meaning in every
age, and contemporary [Australian] writers of speculative fiction ...
examine the dangers and pitfalls of utopian fervour. The most notable of
these works are Beloved Son (1978) and Vaneglory (1981) by George Turner,
and Valencies (1983) by Rory Barnes and Damien Broderick." (The Penguin New
Literary History of Australia, 1988). Critics Ikin, McMullen and Blackford,
in Strange Constellations (1999), also point out that "in its structure,
although not its thematic concern with individual freedom and universal
human dignity, the book is atypical of Broderick's fiction, quite different
from his novels of time travel and altered realities..."
If all this sounds a little downbeat, take heart! Brian W. Aldiss, in
Trillion Year Spree (1986), praised Valencies as "one of the more playful SF
novels of recent years" and quoted it at some length. Ikin, McMullen and
Blackford say: "Some of the book's set pieces ... are glorious pieces of
comic writing." So, yes, it is a literary dystopia, but we hope it's a lot
of fun as well.
====
It's now available as VALENCIES at
http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook7740.htm , but don't say you weren't
warned... :)
Damien Broderick
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