Subject: MAKING BOOK by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

From: [email-masked] ()
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 1994 23:50:11 GMT

MAKING BOOK by Teresa Nielsen Hayden
           NESFA Press, ISBN 0-915368-55-2, 1994, 158pp, US$9.95.
                     A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		      Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This collection of fifteen essays was one of two Boskone XXXI souvenir
books.  (The other was a Emma Bull-Will Shetterly collaboration.)  The
essays cover a wide range of topics: Mormon theology, narcolepsy, what was
*really* wrong with Bret Easton Ellis's AMERICAN PSYCHO, how academic
research works, and the best explanation for and example of why the serial
comma is needed (at least that I've seen).

     The first (Mormon theology) is in "God and I," where, lest you be
misled, Teresa Nielsen Hayden warns you up front that she had recently (as
of 1980, when it was written) been excommunicated by the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the preferred term, especially if one is paid
by the word--which of course I'm not).  Narcolepsy is mentioned or discussed
in several of the essays, since it was the reason for many of the lifestyle
changes Teresa Nielsen Hayden went through.  What was really wrong with
AMERICAN PSYCHO turns out to be everything, explained as only Teresa Nielsen
Hayden could explain it.  The problem with academic research, she says, is a
"sort of scholarly equivalent of Gresham's Law about bad money driving out
good," and uses the (one hopes) hypothetical Pastafazool Cycle as an
example.  And the serial comma?  That would be telling.

     It has traditionally been difficult to get examples of fannish
writing.  Computer networks are changing all that, of course.  Most of the
people nominated for Hugos for Fan Writer are on-line now.  And indeed, the
last two essays here are from GEnie.  But if you want to see what was
written back in the days of *gasp* stencils and mimeographs, then NESFA has
provided it.  If your local bookstore does have MAKING BOOK, I'm amazed!
But if it doesn't, you can order it from NESFA Press, P. O. Box 809,
Framingham MA 01701-0203.

%T      Making Book
%A      Teresa Nielsen Hayden
%C      Boston
%D      February 1994
%I      NESFA Press
%O      trade paperback, US$9.95
%G      ISBN 0-915368-55-2
%P      158pp

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
"The Internet is already an information superhighway, except that ...  it is
like driving a car through a blizzard without windshield wipers or lights, and
all of the road signs are written upside down and backwards."  --Dave Barry