Nova Express v4, #2
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
Nova Express v4 #2 is another fanzine. I got my copy from a free offer for anyone who's a member of LoneStarCon2 (this year's WorldCon), since this zine is on the ballot for the best fanzine Hugo. However it can also be purchased for $4, or a four-issue subscription for $12, sent to PO Box 27231, Austin, TX 78755-2231. It is also available through a number of specialty bookstores that specialize in sf/fantasy.
My own particular favorite of this issue was Don Webb's "Why Lovecraft Still Matters," which led me to dig out my copy of the first issue of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine and re-read the essays on H. P. Lovecraft. Bradley and others have focussed on how Lovecraft saw the Other Realms as fundamentally dark, but a case could also be made that he was reacting to the beginning of the Age of Anxiety, to the sense that the world had somehow run amok and the pleasant certainties of the Victorian Era were flying apart at the seams as dark monsters of uncertainty bubbled up under the guidance of Freud and others of that period.
However, singling out one particular item for praise does not mean that I disregard or despise the others, since everything in this issue was good. Your editorial was particularly thought-provoking, addressing as it does a number of serious questions about the present fiction marketing system. A number of people have been talking about how the commercial fiction delivery system seems to be set in direct opposition to any sort of literary merit, instead looking to produce a neatly-packaged book product that returns the best possible sales numbers, irrespective of what the buying public really wants. Thus more and more people are abandoning reading for other modes of entertainment like the Internet and the World Wide Web where they can find what they want. Jacqueline Lichtenberg has been discussing this at length in her book review column in the Monthly Aspectarian, an online New Age magazine at http://www.lightworks.com/MonthlyAspectarian/.
I also enjoyed the interview with Walter Jon Williams, which gave some fascinating insights into the creative work behind the works of a published author. And the Hong Kong Cinema section was a fascinating look at the imaginative fiction of another part of the world that we often see only in stereotypes. And of course the book reviews provide new looks at books that others have commented on, as well as comments on books that everyone else seems to have overlooked entirely. Some of these books I haven't even heard of, which comes to me as even more proof that something is seriously wrong with the way books are marketed in this country.