An· enjoy the Journey.

Soeculation is a welcome visitor. Rea~oJ.? This is hard and quite subjective.

One good one is that you publish mOre of ~.h~ human (versus the liter~ry) Aldiss tf~n I have seen an~-where else. Readi~ h~$ fictions (and I have at best seen half ~- ~em) I find myself asking the same question Larry Niven posed so elegant%y l:' ~ ~,~ For Aldiss it is a serious

,~, ,~' ~ Jfrection but for you it is a

· ~p :.t='-' ~£~ ~ sym~ton cf health.

The Kong Kover wa~ great and the write*yon better. By the time I reached the · ~kers aha,Santa Claus outfit I was too , ::~: to :ontinue laughing. A truly fine :~ :~! uplift story:

Pi V~NGH~.M CAPITALIST PATRON OF T}~ ARTS

- Gne Ups City Council.

~ ~ ~ I will x~f~ ~ %o ~ ®~%ax~ mete ,i ISC~NL/., 0SA.

! {.cntinue very much to enjoy Speculation ar.i,, ir. fact, think that it is Lmproving

~,e,, M~ ~in.[,. Is experimentalt liberr·ri·hi

;:.~ .~u?, ~:~- ~i. benevolent it still has

,,,a..,e:~ gi.di:t3 papers, acting ~S moral

c=nk:lfs; an, un~i~g contests on the Greatest ~ilm 't f !l 2tree, in a way that is o~ly

Of ' ~z~ ' the author has an obvious co, me-back c,. the =st criticism mede, namely that he iz ~ %ce~!,~ w%th the human reactions to an e..~l~t~ ne~ ;,ith the social and technical balkg~c hQ. InJ. is apparent and no do~bt laudablo. But in ~},:%t case why bother to set th~ ~tcry in Lh¢ future and call it science-fiction ~ It seems to me that with few z~Itcrations ~F!fOND THE RESURRECTION

Could Ye set In the present, especially ~ It car~i=,; an overt Mess~'~ge aimed~ I ~,. i -!~,-~ at each ~mu nvery one o~ us.

considerably.i I am not the biggest fan Of some'~f Nfve~'s work9 because I tend to be something of a purist regarding scientific content and I like to see some literary values her~ and there too. It seemed to me his novel Rln~world failed on literary grounds rather severely. Not only that, but ther~ is a gigantic hole in the entire Ringworld concept - it is gravitationally unstable. If given a nudge lt would fall into the sun. One of these days I am going to put together an article on thisl Nonetheless, I read all his work and I cannot

· ay that for man~ people.

I did not very much like the last Arthur C. Clarke novel, Rendezvous with Rams. He seems to be doing the Niven sort of thing all over-constructing a huge alien artifact and then having his characters spend all their time exploring it. It is interesting engineering but it seems to be an easy trap for the unwary writer. On the other hand~ perhaps the engineers love it. Though I note that neither of these two novels appeared serialized in Analog.

Ia ~,oz'~aat ac.rela ever &l~eax there - im~eaA we t~-- ~ ~ will ~dm *a~ ~e~).

AS for the human reactions': these are I think, well conveyed by the device, no longer an uncommon one~ of having the story told not through one viewpoint but through seven, and principally through the teachers Corlin McGee (young~ female, successful, unfulfilled) and Gregory Tallsman (middle-aged, male, unhappily married). The latter in particular is well-observed, and his stumbling reactions carry you on well to his final enlightenment.

It's a good stroke, too, to have the last chapter seen through the eyes of his wife, up till then merely an unsympathetic and querulous background presence. This gives you, some idea, at lea~t? of the kind of transformation the author is writing about, rounding off th~ ~hesis that to see ~lrough another person's eye's is autom~t, kc~!~y to love and unde~sf~-~

- Tom thlpp~ 1973

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