From: Mats Ohrman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 May 89 03:53:41 +0200

Path: liuida!sunic!kth!mcvax!uunet!husc6!rutgers!att!cbnewsj!ecl
From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers,rec.arts.books
Subject: FULL SPECTRUM edited by Lou Aronica and Shawna McCarthy
Keywords: review
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Date: 30 Apr 89 14:12:31 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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Xref: liuida rec.arts.sf-lovers:20539 rec.arts.books:1137

	   FULL SPECTRUM edited by Lou Aronica and Shawna McCarthy
	       Bantam Spectra, 1988, ISBN 0-553-27482-1, $4.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

     Well, this is certainly the most talked about anthology of 1988, and of
quite a while before that.  It contains one Nebula winner and three Hugo
nominees, so it will obviously be a best-seller (as anthologies go).  Yet I
was less than entirely satisfied with it.

     First, the good points.  There were several good-to-excellent stories,
including Jack McDevitt's "The Fort Moxie Branch" (with the book's now-
famous typo of labeling it "The Fourth Moxie Branch"), Thomas M. Disch's
"Voices of the Kill," Walton Simons's "Ghost Ship" (yet another Titanic
story, but a more evocative one than most), Lisa Goldstein's "My Year with
the Aliens" (though it was somewhat predictable), and Pat Murphy's "Dead Men
on TV."

     There were the usual set of mid-range (average) stories.  Jack Massa's
"Prayerware" is of interest to computer types, but not outstanding.  Nancy
Kress's "Philippa's Hands" and Charles Oberndorf's "Mannequins" reminded me
of a "Twilight Zone" story (or maybe a "Tales from the Darkside"--at any
rate, a television anthology type of story).  (This seems to be true of a
lot of stories these days.)  Elissa Malcohn's "Moments of Clarity" was an
interesting idea, but nowhere near the bombshell that the editors claimed.
Most of the other stories I don't mention here are okay--nothing great, but
worth a read.

     Countering this are such disappointments as Andrew Weiner's "This Is
the Year Zero."  Whether intentionally or not, this is basically the story
of the Pol Pot takeover in Kampuchea presented as science fiction.
Rewriting a historical event as science fiction rarely results in good
science fiction, no matter how tragic the event.  Lewis Shiner's "Oz" is of
no value that I can determine.  (Fred Bals's "Once in a Lullaby" was equally
bizarre, but at least had the virtue of charm.)

     Gregory Benford's "Proselytes" strikes me as racist, and while I know
it's a mistake to try to assign a character's beliefs or words to the
author, it seems to me that Benford must take at least some of the blame for
identifying all of Islam with its more violent proponents.  This is
particularly disturbing in that it promotes the currently popular view that
Islam is a religion of violence and all its adherents want to convert the
world by the sword.  As the current joke goes, the Ayatollah has decided to
deal with Salman Rushdie in a more Christian manner, and is just looking for
where he can put the stake without starting a fire in an oil well.  People
who live in glass houses....

     Norman Spinrad's "Journals of the Plague Years" has been analyzed by
far better reviewers than myself already, so I can merely concur with most
of their criticisms.  Bigelow, the main character, having found a
cure/inoculation for the AIDS virus(es) which are sweeping the country
(which he does in about a month working on his own, while whole teams of
researchers working for years have found nothing), inoculates himself
against the disease.  This cure is designed to be transmitted in the same
way as the disease.  He then decides to protect his wife and son.  But he
concludes the only way to pass the protection to his wife is by raping her,
and the reader is supposed to sympathize with how bad he feels about having
to do this.  To protect his son, he goes to even more baroque lengths--he
hires a prostitute to have sex with him and then a couple of days later,
with his son.  Now first of all, the cure is transmitted in the same way as
the disease.  But the primary method of transmission of AIDS now is through
infected blood (mostly between intravenous drug users).  Even assuming some
sudden needle shortage that Spinrad fails to mention, Bigelow should be able
to pass it through infected blood somehow.  (It certainly seems to be
transmissible enough that one session guarantees its passage.)  Secondly,
Spinrad seems determined to show us that a plague requires drastic means to
contain it--Bigelow is willing to rape his wife (he doesn't tell her that he
has the cure for reasons too flimsy to stand up) and this is "necessary."
But Bigelow's (adult) son KNOWS his father has the cure, so one would
imagine Spinrad would have Bigelow use the same method, minus the force.
But no, that would be incest and homosexuality and even to save his son's
life those are evil--rape is okay, but homosexuality between consenting
adults is not, according to Spinrad.  I find this moral structure odd, and
Spinrad doesn't convince me of its necessity.  And without its necessity,
the force of the novella is lost.  By making his "unpleasant choices" too
easy to refute, he destroys the message he seems to intend--that sometimes
unpleasant choices ARE necessary.

     On the whole, I almost have to recommend the book--it contains many of
the major stories of 1988.  But it also contains some of the major
disappointments.

Evelyn C. Leeper   |   +1 201-957-2070   |   att!mtgzy!ecl or [email-masked]
					Copyright 1989 Evelyn C. Leeper