Orbit 12 - [Anthology] Read online

  Sample titles from the contents pages of the first two German editions of Orbit, published in January and February, 1972: “Staras Flonderanen,” by Kate Wilhelm; “Die Lulies sind unter uns,” by Allison Rice; “Kangeruhgericht,” by Virginia Kidd; “Baby, du worst fabelheft,” by Kate Wilhelm,

  Michael Bishop (The Windows in Dante’s Hell”) teaches freshman English at Georgia State U. He is twenty-eight. His infant son Jamie, along with Mao Tse-tung and Francisco Franco, is a major character in a long story that will not appear inOrbit.

  Leon E. Stover, author of “What We Have Here Is Too Much Communication’’ (Orbit 9), wrote a book on American SF for a French editor, who liked it so much that he invited Stover to attend a convention of Americanists in Paris in the spring of 1972. The topic was science fiction. Stover’s editor is a professor at the Sorbonne, where he has taught American popular culture for twenty-five years.

  Brian W. Aldiss (“Four Stories”) has become a minor celebrity in England since the publication of his best-selling The Hand-Reared Boy. He recently visited the United States, where he spoke at California State College and then toured Tijuana with Harry Harrison. The four Malaria stories presented here were inspired by 18th-century Venetian etchings and engravings, and their titles are derived from that source, chiefly from Tiepolo. His latest work is a history of science fiction, The Billlon-Year Spree, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in England and Doubleday in the United States.

  Miss S. B. Davis, of Cottesloe, Perth, Western Australia, wrote to inform us that she is “a ‘Special Being’ such as is 1)0111 only once in a million years’“ and that God has told her he has made her a little bit differently from the rest “God has shown me I am able, with Me as His instrument, to put atmosphere on the Moon so we people of the earth may habitate it and possibly some form of light could be given to the dark side of the Moon.”

  Kate Wilhelm (“The Red Canary”) was the winner of the 1968 Nebula Award for best short story—”The Planners,” Orbit 3. Edward Bryant’s “Jody After the War” (Orbit 10) and Vonda N. McIntyre’s “Spectra” (Orbit 11) were responses to assignments she gave the authors at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Her most recent book is a novel, Margaret and I, published by Little, Brown in 1971.

  We heard from Jack M. Dann, author of “Whirl Cage” (Orbit 10), that he had just helped Gardner R. Dozois, a frequent contributor, move to Philadelphia. “It was one of our usual odysseys: I had to wire for money—I couldn’t pay the tolls to get back to Binghamton. When I left Gardner he had two dollars cash and was in the process of opening a bank account.”

  Mel Gilden (“What’s the Matter with Herbie?”) attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 1970 and 1971. His first published story, written there, was “What About Us Grils?” It appeared in the anthology Clarion and has been reprinted elsewhere. Gilden was born in 1947: he spent his formative years watching Captain Video, Flash Gordon and Commander Buzz Corey of the Space Patrol. Until recently he lived with his parents in Los Angeles and wrote in the bathroom (the only place he could type at night without disturbing anybody). “I get funny looks when I tell people where I work, and some of them make crude jokes, but I guess that’s the price an artist has to pay.”

  In response to a reader who praised “Heads Africa Tails America” by Josephine Saxton and expressed puzzlement about three other stories in Orbit 9, we wrote: “In Toy Theater’ the narrator says he is going back into his own little box, i.e., that in a way he is a puppet too, like thee & me, or/and if you want to read it that way, there is an anatomical reference to ladies which I will not spell out lest I make you blush. In ‘Marigolds’ the protagonist is running toward a transcendental reality revealed by the rending of the veil of maya. The ending of The Science Fair’ deliberately forecasts another story—you know, like After Worlds Collide, or Flash Gordon on the planet Mongo. Now tell me what the hell ‘Heads Africa Tails America’ is about”

  Vonda N. McIntyre (“The Genius Freaks”) got a degree in biology from the U. of Washington “with honors, cum laude, all that stuff,” and went into graduate work in genetics there, but dropped out when she began to notice that none of her experiments worked. Her story “Spectra,” which appeared in Orbit 11, took second prize in the 1970 Clarion competition. Her own Clarion-type workshop at the U. of Washington is now in its third year.

  In returning a story submitted by a New Orleans friend, we wrote: “Even the funny stories in Orbit tend to take themselves & the universe more seriously than this. E.g., I got a feeling that if Don shot his pecker off, rubber would fly. In Orbit, it would have to be meat” And we added a footnote: “Ground chuck would be OK.”

  Steve Chapman (“Burger Creature”) is twenty-one. He has had one story published previously, in Analog, and has a children’s picture book coming soon from Follett Two of his plays were produced in the 1971 Edinburgh Drama Festival. He has toured England with a mime troupe, and when last heard from was acting in a musical called “On Account of Sid Shrycock” in Chicago.

  From Sonya Dorman, author of “Time Bind” (yet to be published) we heard the following: “I’m apalled at how much editing you had to do, and apologize for the rotten typos; I did proof it myself before sending it out, and don’t understand how I missed so many, as well as absurd mispellings.”

  Doris Piserchia (“Half the Kingdom”) was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, and worked as a lifeguard there while she earned a teacher’s degree in phys. ed. She realized that the next logical step was to get a job teaching, so she climbed on a bus to Pittsburgh and joined the Navy. Four years later she married an Army man, got out of the Navy, had “a baby or five,” traveled all over the world, and then settled down in Utah while her husband took a tour in Vietnam. With nothing to do but baby-sit, she worked toward a master’s in ed. psych. Thesis time came, and she realized she was again training to be a teacher. She kicked it all the way and began to write stories. After a few years’ resistance editors began buying them. Her husband, meanwhile, came back from Vietnam with a wrecked heart, “and this spring or early summer [1972] he will undergo high-risk aortic reconstruction, so I can go nowhere for the duration. I live in a madhouse and my nerves are shot. Perhaps this is the reason why I rarely attempt a serious story. Such an attempt would be very easy for me, but I’m afraid to tap the vein right now.”

  Gene Wolfe (“Continuing Westward”) writes as follows:

  “I am forty.

  “I try to look busy a lot.

  “I remember sitting in English class listening to Texas City blow up. None of us knew what it was, so after five minutes or so Miss Collins said (effectively) the hell with it, we’re going to go on with class, what did you (boom) boys and girls (booom, booom) think of Silas Marner?

  “That’s the sort of thing you’re supposed to put down, right? Actually my character is, to at least an equal degree, being shaped right now by current pressures—by my thoughts, my own thoughts, most of all

  “Wolfe (woolf), Charles, 1791-1823. Irish poet.

  “—, Gene Rodman, 1931- . Am. writer.

  “—, James, 1727-1759. Brit. gen.

  “—, Thomas Clayton, 1900-1938. Am. nov.

  “I am very conscious that a great deal of my behavior is genetically determined, yet at the same time conscious of the possession of a soul, a thing independent of heredity or environment. Also that this present is the distant past—that you and I, Damon, if we are recalled at all will eventually be thought of as contemporaries of Xenophon and Mark Twain. That this is a small world at the edge of its galaxy, tumbling through the night, a provincial and rural backwater.”

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