Tyree's Tuppence

by Tyree Campbell

1.  VIII on the Dot

2.  Variable Star

Anniversaries are benchmarks [pardon my tautology].  They celebrate a single event in relation to what had transpired previously and what went on since.  You get remembrance and renewal in one swell foop.

Not all anniversaries date themselves to pleasant events; some commemorate sadness and loss.  One might even say that triumph and tragedy are hardwired into our human mainframes.  It takes a lot of work to achieve the one, while the other can often be the result of the simple vagaries of chance.  The fundamental rule is:  play the cards in front of you.*

Deal!

For those of you who are new to our green-felt card table, ProMart Publishing [1986-2002] was the brainchild of James B. Baker.  He envisioned and developed publications that included science fiction and fantasy written by new and beginning writers as well as pieces by more experienced writers.  He knew that there are lots of good stories and poems out there that are not going to win any awards but are nevertheless eminently readable and deserve to be read.  He provided, in effect, a bullhorn for new voices.  Most of those voices appeared online, but in late 2001 Jim decided to move into print and asked me to develop a magazine.  Thus was born Aoife's Kiss.

The following summer saw a sequence of events that led to Sam's Dot Publishing.  Aoife's Kiss was published for the first time in June 2002.  Jim Baker passed away in September.  After assuring Jim that his work would continue, I took over direction of the publishing company and changed the name [for legal protection] to Sam's Dot Publishing.

The song, however, remains the same . . .

In fact, the song is gradually becoming a symphony.  Let me repeat one half of the founding philosophy:  there are a lot of good, solid, readable stories and poems out there that will never reach readers unless the small independent publishers** act.  Look at it this way.  We know of Homer's Iliad and Ovid's Metamorphoses and Aeschylus's Agamemnon and Sumeria's Epic of Gilgamesh because, thanks to copyists, paper, memory, and the durability of stone and clay tablets, they survived until Gutenburg found a better means of preservation.  These works are referred to as Classics [and well they should be]. 

Why are they called Classics?  Well, the depictions of humanity and its features and foibles are as profound as those of Shakespeare.  That alone will suffice for the designation.  But it is also possible that these works are regarded as Classics at least in part simply because they have survived, that these are the best of that which has come down to us from the Babylonian and Greek and Roman civilizations--which are regarded as Classic civilizations.  These works are, in fact, not merely the best that have survived--they are all that have survived.

For example, seven plays by Aeschylus have survived.  Yet we know, from other sources, that he wrote at least seventy.  Sixty three of them are lost to us.  We have little or no idea of their quality.  Undoubtedly most of the works of many others of those civilizations have also been lost.#

And yet . . . were an eighth play by Aeschylus to surface, scholars would tumble over themselves in their efforts to obtain it and read it.  Regardless of its quality, it would at least be regarded as good, solid, and readable . . .

Just like the work of so many other writers!

Would this hypothetical eighth play be regarded as a Classic?  That's difficult to say.  But think of it this way:  Aeschylus had sixty three sales to small independent theaters and worked his way up to professional sales with the Amphitheaters of Athens.  So to speak.

Had ProtoMartianos/Samos Dotos operated in ancient Greece, undoubtedly it would have put a few of Aeschylus's works on stage, giving his voice a hearing until he could gain the attention of Aceos, TORos, and Simonos et Schusteros. 

Well, that's where we are now:  just the way Jim Baker wanted it.

It's not enough to publish new and beginning writers, however.  We turn down approximately 75% of the submissions we receive, for a variety of reasons.  Some [though not all] of our editors comment on declined submissions.  In other words, we sometimes give you a clue or two as to what is unacceptable about your submission. 

In the Tuppence as well as in Expressions Newsletter you can occasionally find commentaries regarding some of these declined submissions.  For example, in the June Expressions you'll find a brief "venting" session in which I evaluate several problems I encounter in certain submissions.  In previous Tuppences I've covered "do's and don'ts."  But even this is not enough. 

For example, if I take the time to explain to a writer why I am declining the submission and how that submission can be improved, and the very next submission from that writer contains the very same mistakes found in the previous submission . . . well, it's exasperating, to say the least.  It would be nice if some writers would read and heed my comments.  I'm really trying to help.  And none of our editors is going to accept a submission that is below standard.

Why mention all this now?

Well, it's the time of our anniversary.  June 2009 marks the 8th year of Aoife's Kiss.  September 2009 will mark the 8th year of Sam's Dot.  It's a good time to reflect and renew.

Which leads us into the second part of this Tuppence . . .

I just finished reading Variable Star, the latest novel by Robert A. Heinlein.  Yes, I know, he's passed on to the other side, but he left some notes behind, and Spider Robinson completed the novel.  It's a good read.  More importantly [for me], the style of writing harks back to the adventure SF novels of the 1950s, to the time when I [and many of us, I daresay] cut our reading teeth on SF.  Style-wise, Variable Star was a walk down memory lane.  Because it centers around space travel, it rekindles old dreams.  I have to warn you:  these dreams may soon make a comeback.

You see, in the 1940s and 1950s--and even in the earlier decades of the XX Century--science fiction stories often involved space travel.  The only way humanity could reach the stars was in SF books.  Back then, of course, we didn't know all that much about the Solar System and the nearby stars.  There are some very good novels from that period in which Venus is a lush, tropical planet, for example.  As we learned more and more about outer space, writers corrected earlier misconceptions [replacing them, some might say, with improved misconceptions], but the concept of space travel remained central.

In the 1960s and 1970s, space travel became a reality, at least to the extent that humanity visited the Moon, dispatched various probes to the outer planets, and orbited satellites for communication and espionage.  During that time, and into the 1980s, the number of novels and stories involving space travel diminished somewhat, as writers focused more on inner space and the workings of the mind.  Almost inevitably, this shift of focus led to the development of the horror genre, for it is in the mind--in inner space--that all dark things lurk. 

In the 1980s and 1990s it became apparent that, with the exception of shuttles and probes, humanity was withdrawing from outer space.  The enormous expense of travel, the insurmountably vast distances between stars, and the focus on ourselves and our feelings and personal comforts all contributed to this withdrawal.  With physical interstellar travel denied us, we could only fantasize about alien worlds and alien cultures.  In such a milieu, fantasy could and did thrive.  In the absence of interstellar drives, writers postulated portals through which one might be whisked almost instantaneously to other worlds.  Humanity was whipsawed, caught between imagining other realities on the one hand and the horrors of our own device on the other.  Magic, it was, versus monsters.

Still, some writers kept alive the dream of space travel.  The late Charles Sheffield treated of it, even if at subliminal velocities--and did it so very well that I feel confident in recommending to you any of his works [my personal favorite is Between the Strokes of Night, which in its own way is one of the great SF romances of all time].  David Weber's Honor Harrington series, inspired undisguisedly by the Horatio Hornblower novels, is excellent space travel fare, and especially Weber's Off Armageddon Reef.  The Well of Souls books by the late Jack Chalker are worthy reads.  To name a few . . .

Let's name one other:  James B. Baker, publisher of new and beginning writers [including me, way back when].  Publishing was Jim's means--but his dream was traveling to the stars.  Perhaps he, too, sensed humanity's withdrawal from its destiny in space, and was doing what he could to correct that, by publishing new and beginning writers and especially those who treated of space travel [yup, including me].

Which brings us roundabout to the first decade of the XXI Century--to us.  The US has been reduced to orbiting spy and weather satellites and to hitching rides with Russians to get to a space station or to fix the Hubble Space Telescope.  There are, to be sure, plans by the Chinese and [I think] the Japanese to put footprints in Mars dust in about thirty years.  Not much else.  There is, in effect, hardly any space travel a-tall.

Which means it's time to write about it again.

So . . . yes, we do publish horror, and do very well with it, too.  Just check out Champagne Shivers, Potter's Field 1, 2, & 3, and Cover of Darkness.  Yes, we do publish fantasy--just read Dana Baird's The Spell Keeper and its upcoming sequel, Veil of Whispers, and Ascendant by David Blalock, and Shelter of Daylight. 

But in this time of renewal we remind ourselves of our roots:  Jim Baker's dream of travel to the stars.  All we need now are the SF stories.  Tell us what happens out there.  Talk to us of encounters and strangeness; of humanity and survival and coping; of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, having to make impossible decisions.  The Martian Wave and Aoife's Kiss are looking for those SF stories.  Write them.  Submit them.  The time for the stars will come again.

*********************

* Thanks to Spider Robinson for that little insight.

** That would be, among others, us.

# The Epic of Gilgamesh has often been augmented or expanded by fresh discoveries of clay tablets in sites later than those of the Sumerian and Akkadian sites [e.g., Hittite].  It is doubtful, however, that more materials from the Greek and Roman times will be found.

Past Tuppence:
March 2009
December 2008
September 2008
June 2008
March 2008
December 2007
September 2007
June 2007
March 2007
December 2006
September 2006
June 2006
March 2006
December 2005
September 2005
June 2005
March 2005
December 2004
September 2004
June 2004
March 2004
December 2003
September 2003
June 2003
March 2003
December 2002
October 2002
August 2002
June 2002
April 2002
February 2002
December 2001
October 2001
August 2001

Read more from Tyree Campbell in any of the following:

The Dog at the Foot of the Bed
by Tyree Campbell

Wondrouse Web Worlds Vol. 6

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 5

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 4

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 3

Sex and the Single Alien
An anthology

Nyx
A novel by Tyree Campbell

Wondrous Web Worlds Vol. 2