Ibn Qirtaiba reaches a milestone with issue 10, and I don't just mean double figures. This is the first issue of the magazine to be published exclusively on the World Wide Web. The editorial to issue 9, while foreshadowing this move, also stated my reluctance to abandon the printed format entirely while there remained a minimum of paying subscribers. That minimum was breached shortly after issue 9 was published, at which time the decision to discontinue hard copy publication of the magazine was made. Although the change has inconvenienced some former subscribers without access to the Internet, the positive reaction I have received from many new readers of Ibn Qirtaiba has fortified my view that publication on the World Wide Web represents the future for SF fanzines (see alt.zines for proof).
So, apart from the medium of publication, what has changed? In brief, three things.
This issue's feature is an exclusive interview with comic author Neil Gaiman, best known for his work on The Sandman, which winds up its run this year. We also begin a regular feature on the coolest 10 SF sites of the moment, to which you are encouraged to submit your nominations. The Fiction Archives column looks at Larry Niven's The Ringworld Engineers, and the issue concludes with a double installment of that indeterminable serial, Other People's Flesh. Surf on, sci-philes!
Interview with Neil
Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is not only the most famous comic author in the world, but the only famous comic author in the world, as far as casual readers are concerned. He has his own Internet newsgroup (alt.fan.neil.gaiman), at least one fanzine devoted to his work (The Magian Line), and a lucrative line of spin-off merchandise.
His most celebrated comic series, The Sandman,
combines fantasy, horror, history, humour and folklore. It
revolves around the lives and realms of seven Eternals, who are
named for the forces they represent - Death, 
Dream, Destiny,
Desire, Despair, Delirium and Destruction. The comic is labelled
"for mature readers" - a description which is
appropriate not simply because of its violence and occasional
sexual scenes, but because of the intelligence and learnedness of
its scripts. Issue 75 of The Sandman to be published
shortly will bring the series to an end after more than six
years.
Some of Neil Gaiman's other claims to fame are his authorship of Don't Panic: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett) and his lyric-writing for the group The Flash Girls. He recently took some time out from his schedule to speak to Ibn Qirtaiba.
IQ: The Sandman is the comic that made you a celebrity and which you remain best known for. Is it really at an end, or will you return to it in the future?
NG: Sandman, as a monthly comic, is finished, and I cannot imagine a future in which I return to writing a monthly Sandman comic.
IQ: You were raised in England. English people tend to consider that they possess a better capacity for subtlety and understatement than Americans, and that this shows in their writing. Could The Sandman have been written by an American?
NG: I'm sure Sandman could have been written by an American. Or an Australian. Or a Dane. Or a different Englishman to me. In either case it would have been a different comic, though.
IQ: What other projects are you now turning your talents to?
NG: A 6 part BBC TV series called Neverwhere; a heavily illustrated novella called Stardust with Charles Vess; Death - The Time of Your Life; and various bits and bobs. I've been offered a number of films, either in a writing or a directing capacity but haven't taken anything yet.
IQ: Why did you become involved with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund? Aren't there more important causes to raise money for?
NG: Because I come from a country with no tradition of freedom of speech, I suppose, and I regard it as a precious and wonderful thing. Aren't there more important causes to raise money for? What an odd question: of course there are, from cancer research through to sheltering the homeless, and I've done my share on fundraising for some of those too. But if I don't raise the money for the CBLDF there's no guarantee anyone else is going to. (This week a cop in Florida ordered a chain of stores not to sell Death: The High Cost of Living because she didn't like the fact it had safe sex information in the back. Instead of taking the book off sale, the store owner rang the CBLDF, and the CBLDF lawyer phoned the Detective in question and pointed out she was violating the law.)
IQ: What was your involvement in fandom before you became a writer, and what is your involvement now?
NG: I had no involvement in fandom before I was a writer, except for a few comics fanzines I read when I was 15. These days, I suppose I have many fannish friends, but no fannish time.
IQ: There remains a strong prejudice against comics in the literary mainstream. Aside from those with some exposure to fandom, most adults would never consider buying a comic. As for children, comic books are still confiscated from them in class, instead of being placed on the English curriculum. Will this ever change, in your opinion, and if so, how?
NG: I hope not. That we're still being confiscated and reviled means we still have some life left in us. I'd hate to be as safe as Mainstream English Lit.
IQ: What are some of the comics you have most enjoyed reading recently, aside from your own?
NG: From Hell, Cerebus, Love and Rockets, Hate, Eightball, Bone.
IQ: "Story arcs" seem to be the narrative
fashion of the 1990s, both in comics and television. What
attracted you to this form?
NG: Because some stories take longer than 24 pages to tell.
IQ: Your liberal use of obscure literary allusions and continuity references undoubtedly alienates many less well-read or casual readers. Is this a fault of your writing style?
NG: Undoubtedly.
IQ: Isaac Asimov once said that fantasy "deals with all the events, past, present or future, that might arise in any possible society with only the exception of the one which actually exists." Does this explain the attraction of fantasy for you?
NG: No. I like fantasy because it's a way of looking very directly at "the one which actually exists", and seeing it in a new way.
Ibn Qirtaiba thanks Neil Gaiman for his time. To find out more about Neil Gaiman and his work, visit The Dreaming.
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Larry Niven's Ringworld took out the Hugo and Nebula awards on its publication in 1971. Much like another Hugo and Nebula winner, Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, Ringworld featured an unimaginably vast artificial world constructed aeons ago by an unknown alien race. Compared with Rama, Ringworld was a little less innocent, a lot broader in scope, and two years earlier to be published.
Nine years after Ringworld, The Ringworld Engineers hit the shelves (once again beating Clarke, whose Rama 2 bears some striking similarities to the former novel). Louis Wu returns as the sprightly two hundred year old hero, as does the kzin Speaker-To-Animals (a kind of humanoid wildcat), who earned the name Chmeee for his adventures in the previous novel. Nessus, the Pierson,'s puppeteer does not return, but is replaced by his spouse known as the Hindmost, a similarly manipulative and intelligent yet cowardly creature.
The creature stood solidly braced on a single hind leg and two wide-spaced forelegs. Between the shoulders rose a thick hump: the braincase, covered by a rich golden mane curled into ringlets and glittering with jewels. Two long, sinuous necks rose from either side of the braincase, ending in flat heads. Those loose-lipped mouths had served the puppeteers as hands for all of their history. One mouth clutched a stunner of human make, a long, forked tongue curled around the trigger.
The Ringworld Engineers takes place 23 years after Louis, Speaker/Chmeee and Nessus escaped from their first expedition to the Ringworld through a hole in the world's crust. Louis has now become addicted to a wire which passes current to the pleasure centre of his brain, while the battle-scarred Chmeee holds a post of authority on his home world. Both are kidnapped by the Hindmost to man a treasure-hunting expedition to the Ringworld.
The kzin's eyes had been watching him for some time. Now the paralyzed kzin cleared his throat experimentally and rumbled, "Loo-ee Woo."
"Uh," said Louis. He had been thinking of killing himself, but there was no way. He could barely wiggle his fingers.
"Louis, urr you wirehead?"
"Ungle," said Louis, to buy time. It worked. The kzin gave up the effort.
But the star of the show is naturally the Ringworld
itself. For those unfamiliar with the Ringworld, it is a vast
ribbon of artificial planetary crust encircling a star, which
takes better advantage of the star's energy than a regular world,
and contains three million times more surface area to accomodate
its inhabitants. If it assists the imagination to replace one
science fiction concept with another, it is essentially a thin
slice of a Dyson's sphere.
Most readers of Ringworld could swear that Niven left no technical stone unturned in his pseudo-scientific expositions of the physics of his fictional world. However some technically-minded readers pointed to him that the design of the Ringworld was flawed - it was unstable in its lateral plane around the sun. Niven must have been sufficiently chastened that he felt the need to write an entire book correcting his oversight. In The Ringworld Engineers Niven reveals that there was indeed a system of attitude jets to keep the Ringworld centered around its sun, but the jets were removed by later inhabitants of the world and used for spaceship propulsion units. As a result, the Ringworld is in danger of intersecting its sun.
"Picture a shadow square sweeping down the width of the Ringworld at around seven hundred miles per second. Picture a thousand times the population of human space dying as the Ringworld disintegrates."
Although initially kidnapped by the Puppeteer for
entirely more selfish ends, Louis, and later Chmeee, spend much
of the novel piecing together the fate that has befallen the
Ringworld, and searching for the control centre of the world that
they believe will allow them to prevent the disaster. The trio
eventually find the control centre - itself the size of a planet,
yet hidden in a place the world's inhabitants would never suspect
- and meet an old acquaintance there as well. But even with the
resources of the Ringworld at their command, how can they
possibly move the entire world back around its sun, without the
use of its attitude jets?
Niven develops his original concept in many ways. As the title suggests, we finally learn who built the Ringworld, and are given some idea of why they did so. The mechanics of the world are also exposed for the first time in all their enormity - confirming that the Ringworld engineers weren't inclined to do things by halves. For instance, we discover that one of the world's great oceans is dotted with islands designed as full-size reproductions, not of continents, but of entire planets. Niven also introduces us to numerous new characters, including various humanoid and near-humanoid species which have evolved on the Ringworld to populate its diverse ecosystems.
Something large and black stood waist-deep in water offshore. It was not human and not otter, but a little of both. It waited patiently, watching the lander with large brown eyes.
Larry Niven's prose style belies his concern with scientific accuracy. Although his writing is at least as technical as Arthur Clarke's, it is at the same time as breezy as Harry Harrison's, and as carnal as Philip José Farmer's. The Ringworld Engineers is an adventure novel, not a technical manual, and even for those who steer away from hard SF, it is never less than fun to read.
Something leaped from the crest of the next hill over. Green light speared it in midair, and held while the thing flamed and died. So much for Chmeee's space-suit. But a flight of hand-sized missiles flew toward the base of the green laser beam. Half a dozen white flashes from behind the rise, then the snap! of lightning striking close, showed that Chmeee had succeeded in turning puppeteer-made batteries into bombs.
The Ringworld Engineers is far from a faultless book. Most glaringly, the Hindmost's pretext for the mission is a rather flimsy excuse to reassemble the original cast. Moreover, once assembled, they soon split up again (Chmeee is absent for over a third of the book), to reconvene only at the conclusion. It must also be said that the ending seems somewhat like a scientific rabbit-from-a-hat to the lay reader (as Isaac Asimov would say a "pocket frannistan" is employed - although a mighty large one in this case).
Overall however, The Ringworld Engineers holds the reader's interest well, and makes for an exciting, occasionally amusing, often captivating, and finally awe-inspiring read. Another book to add to your to-read list.
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| 1 | War of the Worlds | Experience Orson Welles’ classic dramatisation of Wells’ equally classic novel, through the magic of RealAudio! |
| 2 | Science Fiction Weekly | A good, regular commercial SF magazine on the Web. Bookmark it. |
| 3 | 3D TARDIS | You’ll need a VRML viewer such as VRWeb to check out this fab 3D TARDIS. |
| 4 | The Dominion | Americans and Europeans are lucky enough to have the Sci-Fi channel on their pay-TV screens. The rest of us have to settle for this. |
| 5 | SFX On-line | The glossiest science fiction magazine ever, and you can read a selection of the articles here without outlaying a cent/penny/yen. |
| 6 | Kaleria Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine | As long as your Internet provider doesn’t charge by volume, you’ll love this multimedia fanzine. |
| 7 | Red Star Station | Contribute your own text, art and sound to help create new science fiction worlds. |
| 8 | Bantam Spectra Science Fiction Forum | Some of the best modern SF authors publish on the Spectra imprint. Its web site contains book extracts, interviews, opinion and more. |
| 9 | Cybertown | Cybertown combines content and links in a mock 21st century virtual community. Soon to be enhanced with 3D Virtual Reality technology. |
| 10 | Sci-fi references in music | Score a 10 on the sad fan test if you spend hours poring over this guff, like I did. |
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The story so far: Mark Heydon was about to transmat from Perth to Singapore when the operator of the transmat started shooting at him and was killed by Heydon in the ensuing fight. At the same time as he fled from the scene, he appeared to be in Singapore, and was questioned there by police. The two Heydons met and the Heydon from Singapore explained that in a transmat malfunction his body had been transmitted to its destination without the original copy in Perth being destroyed. This Heydon, having been charged with the murder, entreats the first Heydon to surrender. He refuses, and now horrified by transmat technology, tells his tale on current affairs television. A radical anti-technology group takes up Heydon's cause, and he unwittingly joins them in blowing up the transmat terminal. The other Heydon is engaged by the police to find his double, who is wanted for the bombing. When Heydon phones home the other Heydon keeps him talking about the wave of public feeling he has generated against transmats, while the police close on the phone booth.
"Mark Heydon?" DC Pearsall asked.
"I'm sorry, Mark," came the voice at his ear.
"I am arresting you for wilful murder."
"But I meant what I said about the deal. Think about it." There was a click at the other end.
"You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so..."
"Shed those kilos, with numerology! Psychic Clara tells how!" Unconvinced, Heydon cast the New Woman back onto the pile and fished for an elderly Time from the police station's mean selection. It had been at least two hours since the interview room door had closed on his double and he had been banished to a waiting room. It was the station's policy to provide relatives of interviewees with coffee while they waited. Heydon sipped his. He discarded the Time and chose a Wired.
"Mr Heydon?" a voice beckoned him at last. He followed the young officer along grey corridors and down a flight of stairs, not to the interview room but to a warren of holding cells. His other self stood outside an open cell door flanked by DC Pearsall and Constable McKellar. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his clothes - the same green shirt and tan pants he had worn since the transmat accident - were crumpled and stale.
"We've decided to keep Mr Heydon in custody while we complete our enquiries," McKellar reported.
"Can I have a minute with him, alone?" Heydon asked.
The officer glanced at DC Pearsall, who extended her hand toward the cell. "Be our guest." She prodded the prisoner inside, and the other Heydon followed as the metal door clanged shut.
The prisoner ignored the other Heydon, shuffling towards the cell's narrow bed and reclining without a word.
"So what did you tell them?" Heydon asked conversationally. The figure on the bed ignored him. "Did you agree to be relocated?"
"Stuff you," the prisoner spat. "That's all you're worried about, isn't it? I'm an inconvenience. You just want me out of the way so that you can resume your cosy little life. Well no, as it happens I didn't agree to be relocated. When this is all over I'm going back home with Penny and resuming my job."
Heydon chuckled uneasily and shook his head. "She's mine, Mark, and it's my job. You've lost them both now. You're known around Australia as a terrorist. I'm not blaming you, but do you think Penny's going to prefer a criminal for a husband, or me?"
"You bastard," the prisoner breathed, rising from the bed.
"I'm telling it like it is, Mark," the other Heydon insisted. "I mean, look at you. You're a wreck. You go nuts on Mike Carr Live in front of millions of viewers. The next day you blow up one of his reporters - or one of your loony mates does. You're unhinged. An accessory to murder, at the very least."
"You utter bastard," the prisoner exclaimed. "Isn't it enough for you to ruin my life? Do you have to taunt me in my jail cell as well? You keep it up and I'm not going to be just an accessory to murder."
The other smiled condescendingly. "This is exactly what I mean. You are not me any more, you're somebody else. I was never violent like this. Even if you don't go to jail, I'm not letting you within a mile of Penny again."
His smile didn't have time to fade before it met the prisoner's fist.
"Better check on the twins," Pearsall remarked, glancing at the clock on the wall. McKellar nodded, and motioned to the custody sergeant who accompanied him to Heydon's cell. McKellar snapped open a metal plate in the cell door and peered inside. One of the occupants, wearing a green and white shirt, lay still on the cell's bed, watched over by the other.
"You done?" McKellar asked.
"Er, yeah, yeah," Heydon muttered, turning and wiping his hands on his jeans.
"What did you do, sing him a lullaby?" McKellar glanced towards the prone figure.
"Just tired I guess, after so long on the run," Heydon replied.
The custody sergeant swung open the door to let Heydon out, and locked it again with a silver key-card.
"I don't suppose you'll be wanting to stay around any longer, will you?" McKellar asked.
"No indeed," Heydon assured him, "I'm off home."
"You've been a great help, Mark. I'll show you out." The Scotsman escorted Heydon to the door to the police station, where he paused and extended his hand. "Thanks again. We'll call you again when we need you." Heydon clasped McKellar's hand for a moment, then hurried out of the building, located his car in the car park, and drove away at speed.
Mark Heydon awoke on a plastic mattress with his skull aching. The room was dark, and it was not his own. He realised where he was in a few seconds, and why he was there the second after. Frantically, he stumbled to the cell door and began to kick it, yelling for help.
After three minutes of continued kicking, a bleary face appeared in the window of the door. "Yeah, whadissit?"
"Let me out! You've got the wrong man! There's been a mistake!" The red-eyed officer shook his head and started to close the metal plate over the window. Heydon yelped, "Wait! Let me speak to Constables Pearsall or McKellar."
"They'll be in in the morning. Now let me go and get some... do my work." The metal plate clanged shut.
Heydon paced the cell for hours. He tried to get back to sleep, but failed. He kicked the cell door, but nobody came. Eventually light and activity began to return to the station and an officer brought him breakfast. Heydon refused it and demanded to see his arresting officers. The officer left the breakfast tray and locked the door.
It opened again after some minutes and Pearsall and McKellar stood outside. "You been causing trouble, Mr Heydon?" the former asked.
"Damn right I have," Heydon exclaimed, "I'm not supposed to be here. The Mark Heydon you're after - the terrorist - knocked me out and took my clothes. I'm the guy who helped you catch him. You've got to let me out of here!"
Pearsall smirked. "Nice try, Mr Heydon. We'll let you out soon enough for your committal." As she made to leave, Heydon grabbed her arm.
"Think about it for a moment, Constable," he insisted. "Two men, identical except for their clothes. Both of them are left alone in a cell. When the cell door is opened one of them is unconscious. Now you don't need to be a senior detective to twig to what's happened!"
Pearsall released her arm forcibly, but made no further move to leave. Heydon met McKellar's unsteady gaze. Unnerved, the Scot challenged him, "So what do expect us to do - take your word for it and let you go?"
"Not yet; I'll help you find him first. Handcuff me, chain me up if you need to, stick me in the back of a police car and let's go find him." The officers silently considered this proposition. Heydon added for effect, "I don't need to tell you that you're going to have a lot of paperwork to do when it turns out that you let the wrong man go free. The sooner you find him again the better we're all going to sleep."
The officers consulted each other in low voices. Pearsall eventually stated flatly, "We'll take car 14," and turned to leave. McKellar prodded Heydon down the corridor and led the way out of the building.
"No cuffs?" Heydon asked as they reached the car and Pearsall opened the back door for him.
"Just get in, before I change my mind," the detective replied curtly.
"So," McKellar addressed Heydon obsequiously as the car pulled away, "you're the boss; where do we go?"
Heydon missed the intended irony. "There are two obvious places we should try first, although he'll probably be too smart to be at either of them. Home, and the Tempus Fugit. We've been lucky at the Tempus Fugit twice before, so we might as well try again there."
McKellar obeyed and turned the police car towards the inner-city's cafe district. As in other cities, the location of Perth's most fashionable venues migrated in an unpredictable manner from year to year. The current cafe district of choice occupied the site of an unsuccessful urban residential project.
As the car turned into Wellington Street near the city centre, Pearsall swore aloud. "I almost forgot about that bloody demonstration. We should have tried Heydon's home first." The road ahead was clogged with marching demonstrators. Gaudy placards read, "Transmat genocide" - "Instransit destroy souls for money" - "Death by transmat" - "Mark Heydon is innocent".
Two police escorts on motorcycles led the parade. McKellar wound down the window and bellowed at one, "Let us through Ryan, this is urgent." The cycle stopped and Ryan attempted to clear a path through the throng. The car inched forward as the crowd parted.
Before the police car had progressed ten metres, a voice from the crowd rang out, "There he is! It's Mark Heydon! Look, in the back of the police car - they're carting him off to jail."
In seconds, the path ahead of the car disappeared as it was surrounded by shouting, gesticulating demonstrators. There was a sudden jolt and a scream from near the front wheels. DC Pearsall ordered, "Stop the car for Chrissakes, you'll kill someone!" As McKellar trod the brake pedal to the floor, fists and feet hailed on the car's bonnet and boot. A maniacal face was thrust against the windscreen, then disappeared as its owner clambered onto the roof of the vehicle. A wailing teenager nursing a bloody sleeve was dragged from under the car. Pearsall grabbed the radio from its housing and called for back-up as McKellar gunned the motor in what he hoped was a threatening manner.
The car lurched to the side as a group of demonstrators attempted to roll it over. The man on the roof fell onto the sea of bodies on the other side, crushing two to the ground. The car lurched again. Then with a crunch the rear window caved in, glass fragments spraying the back seat as they were cleared from the jagged window with a metal pipe. Muscled hands reached in and grabbed Heydon by the shoulders. For a moment it seemed that the seat belt would hold him, but the hands loosened it and pulled him up with insane strength. He could feel his shirt being shredded as the hands dragged him out over the shards of the rear window.
The hands were a woman's, and she wore a black jacket adorned with badges. The woman clasped Heydon's body in a fierce grip. Pearsall clambered into the back seat as she unholstered her revolver, but Natasha Morris had already dissolved into the crowd. Someone saw Pearsall's weapon and screamed, "She's got a gun!". Once again the car lurched sideways, but this time it rose inexorably to the vertical, teetered on its side, and crashed upside down to the ground, scattering demonstrators in its wake. The shards of the rear window closed like incisors on Pearsall's neck.
A middle-aged man in a black suit was hoisted onto the car's underside where he raised his fist with one arm and a megaphone with the other. "Friends, it is time to fight back!" his distorted voice echoed. A cheer rose and died away. "Don't think that Instransit is our only enemy - even the police are against us. Perhaps the only man to have survived the transmat's death ray has just now been rescued from their clutches." A smaller cheer rose from the middle of the crowd where Heydon struggled in Natasha's arms. "Mark Heydon has revealed to us how transmats destroy the bodies we were born with and cobble together replacements from other people's flesh. These replacements - like Frankenstein's monster - are soulless abominations." The man's pale eyes searched the crowd. "Many of you may not believe in existence of the soul, but the proof is here beneath my feet. Who was responsible for Mark Heydon's capture by the police, but his soulless brother? This is a betrayal that must be avenged." The crowd surged around the car, inflamed by their leader's call. "Now is the time to act," he urged the frenzied mob, "before humanity is completely subjugated by machines. It is time to fight!" The crowd roared as one. Triumphant, Dr Asqui lit a rag and tossed it into the workings of the upturned police car, leaping to the ground as it began to blaze.