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From Rhode Island: Birthplace of Mr. Potato-head... it's
**************************
ASTRAL AVENUE
**************************
Number 1 November 1986 "Eff the ineffable!"
JUDGEMENT IN ALL THINGS
TOPICS OF PRESENT INTEREST
Right Up to Date
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
Astral Avenue is an actual Providence street located not far from our
home. Short, tree-lined, unprepossessing, it and its inhabitants have never
yet exhibited any overt trace of Kozmic Konsciousness. And yet... light
fractures strangely there on a summer's day; mailmen have been seen to enter
and SKIP SOME HOUSES; LOVECRAFT NEVER WALKED ON IT; and there are STRAY DOGS
ROAMING FREE. We wonder....
KING OF AMERICA
"He thought he was the King of America/ Where they pour Coca Cola just like
vintage wine/ Now I try hard not to become hysterical/ But I'm not sure if
I am laughing or crying." -- Elvis Costello
I do not wish to indict Stephen King's story in the October issue of
OMNI ("The End of the Whole Mess") simply because it is a lame, boneheaded,
implausible farrago of old ideas and cliches. After all, plenty of
momentarily captivating SF had been written based on stale or improbable
notions (A. E. Van V.: Q.E.D.). No, what I object to about King's story is
that it is patently the work of a man who -- at this stage of his career,
after however many best-selling words -- still cannot write with any degree
of competence larger than that of an apprentice hack.
I identify three major failings in King's writings, which I'll try to
illustrate from this one story, where examples abound. The reader himself is
invited to look for instances in King's novels.
1). King has only one voice.
By this, I do not mean that all his fiction is identifiable as
emanating from the same man. That is hardly a flaw. No, I mean that no
matter how a King story is narrated -- first person, as here, or omniscient
third person -- no matter how many characters are involved (basically two
here, casts of thousands elsewhere), EVERY DESCRIPTION, EVERY WORD OF
DIALOGUE, IS FILTERED BLATANTLY THROUGH KING'S OWN SET OF QUIRKS. There is
no differentiation of characters in a King story, there are no perceptions
evident but his. King inhabits a one-man universe.
"T.E.O.T.W.M." features two brothers: one ostensibly a bright, but
normal writer; the other a "genius." Their speech, mannerisms, and actions
are identical.
WRITER: "Good shit, too."
GENIUS: "...bullshit...bullshit."
WRITER: "...some weird shit..."
GENIUS: "Shit..."
Is this some hidden commentary on the writer-narrator's lack of talent,
or how he and his brother think alike? I doubt it. What it is, is Stephen
King talking as he would aloud. (Compare this laughable portrait of a
genius, by the way, to Greg Bear's superior work in BLOOD MUSIC, which has
much the same theme as the King story.)
Let's look at some more examples of how a King story is like being
trapped in an empty room with the author himself.
The narrator is born in 1980; his brother in '87. But if you think they
exhibit consciousnesses formed by the events of the 'eighties and 'nineties,
forget it. They talk just like King, exhibiting all his by-now familiar
tics: roots or retro music (Chuck Berry, Youngbloods, George Jones);
baseball stars from two or three decades in the story's past (Catfish Hunter,
Ron Guidry); LSD; old TV shows (WILD KINGDOM, ANDY OF MAYBERRY); comics
(Peanuts); toys (Paddington Bear, American Flyer wagon); celebrities (Rodney
Dangerfield). The depressing list goes on.
If King had really wanted to limn characters born in the 'eighties, he
could have stuck with all these same interests, but just updated them. Teddy
Ruxpin instead of Paddington, different rock stars, etc. But that would have
been too much work. And it wouldn't have reflected King's own youth, his
only imaginative source.
2). King's figurative writing and his literal/descriptive writing fail
to seduce or convince the reader, and frequently accomplish just the reverse.
King employs the same metaphors over and over and over. Mostly they
involve excretion or fearful sex. "Asshole," "pissing in their pants," "pass
a mental kidney stone," "social diseases," "AIDS virus," "my back teeth are
floating," "potty trained," "our dad farted so much," "I want whores to
douche in it." And let us not forget the "shit" leitmotif.
But I can't go on. After a while, it's like fill-in-the-blank: if you
can think of a urogenital image, King'll use it. Perhaps this is some grand
Yeatsian "Love has pitched its temples in the place of excrement" riff. Yeah,
and maybe Billy Idol now houses the spirit of John Lennon. These aren't
planned tropes, they're psychoanalytic free-association -- and they're simply
embarrassing.
As for his attempts at transcribing reality in a convincing manner, King
fails because he only knows three tactics: a) make it "cute"; b) make it
"gross" (a favorite King word, used in "T.E.O.T.W.M."); c) make it "hip."
All three stratagems are miserable substitutes for simply observing
reality and transcribing accurately. CUTE: "genny" for generator; "footy
pajamas"; "Bow-Wow" for Howard. GROSS: "died raving and pissing"; "his
body... impaling itself on a tree"; "some senile farmer got pissed at a pig
and hit him with a shovel". HIP: "acid flashback"; "the goddamnedest
popskull"; "a big bulldyke who smokes Odie Perodie cigars" (my fave).
King seems to believe that by employing these three tactics he will
create fiction that allows him to live up to his undeserved rep as a
popculture maven, someone who has his finger on the pulse of America. To me,
that describes William Burroughs and his work. Who King sounds like is
Johnny Carson. The same mentality is evident: funny words like "Albanian"
and "nostril hair" automatically rate a laff.
3). King has no sense of pace, plotting, or climax.
This is a familiar charge against the man, and I will not belabor it
here. I only direct your attention to the ostensibly thrilling but draggy
passage about the boy genius's glider, and the interminable "Flowers for
Algernon" ending.
And although King seems to realize his lack of brevity -- "Shit, I
can't afford these digressions" -- he does nothing about it, perhaps
realizing, rightly so, that he hasn't developed (and probably never will, at
this point) the skills to shape his fiction consciously, and must rely on
whatever tepid lava is vomited up.
(Also note this Freudian slip: "Sometimes his syntax was garbled and
his modifiers misplaced... such flaws... plague most writers all their
lives.")
King is the F. Marion Crawford of our day. His work is like
pigeontracks in cement: arbitrary, but with a semblance of intention. But
cement is just sand and water, and crumbles eventually.
AVEDON ASKED HER TO POSE, BUT SHE ATE HIM
A recent frontpage article in the Arts section of the Sunday NEW YORK
TIMES mentioned a "life-size sculpture of the Sphinx." Is this one of New
Journalism's fictional sources?
"GER--? GER--? DOES IT MEAN 'PROTO'?"
Has anyone else noticed that a prominent Soviet spokesman is named
"Gerasimov"? Who knows Russian out there? Does "asimov" mean something, and
is "ger" a prefix? What if "asimov" is the Russian word for some kinda slug
or sumpin? We demand to know!
GRAFFITO OF THE MONTH
"Dyslexics of the world, untie!"
FREEFLOATING INVECTIVE: PASS IT ON
"The sheikh of my quarter is a creature of such horrible ugliness that
I doubt not he was born from the coupling of a hyena and a pig. His approach
is pestilential; for his mouth is no ordinary mouth, but rather a dirty anus
like the hole of a privy; his fish-colored eyes pop sideways; his scabby lips
are like a venereal sore and jet out spittle when he speaks; his ears are a
sow's ears; his flabby painted cheeks are like an old ape's bottom; his teeth
have fallen from his jaws from eating filth; his body is fretted with every
foul disease of the earth; as for his anus -- well, he has not got one: for
he has so long given himself to be a ditch for the tools of donkey-boys,
nightmen, and sweepers, that his arsegut has rotted away and is now a cave
stuffed with cotton swabs to prevent his tripes from falling out." -- 1001
Nites, "The Tale of the Sweeper
Wakened."
ASTRAL AVENUE -- Paul Di Filippo
2 Poplar Street
Providence, RI 02906
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ASTRAL AVENUE
*****************
No 10. August 1987
"like Route One, where it passes through the heart of Providence"
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW Thomas Pynchon page 537.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
We smell a conspiracy -- or at least a case of psychic collusion.
Tell us what you think.
We refer to the increasing prevalence, in print and on televsion, of
ads for adult diapers.
Logically, these ads would seem to be a waste of money. It's like
advertising insulin. The prouduct has a finite market. Those who need it
are captive consumers, and are going to buy it whether exhorted or not. It's
also likely they know where to purchase the item. Those who don't need adult
diapers are not going to be persuaded to buy them by a smiling woman telling
them how secure she feels, now that she's discovered Baby-Huey-sized plastic
underwear. There is just no reason for these ads to exist.
Unless, of course, they represent some psychic need. Is this
country retreating to infantilism? In an age of sex as death. are we trying
to revert to a time when our genitals were solely instruments of excretion?
Do we all long to be swaddled in bunting? Has adulthood proven too complex?
If you aswered yes to any of these questions, perhaps I could
interest you in a new product I'm trying to market: scotch-flavored teething
rings....
LEAVING NEW YORK
It was 96 degrees in New York that day. Inside Penn Station, the
crowd of Boston-bound commuters was already sweaty and enervated, before they
had even begun their trip. They waited anxiously for the announcement that
their train was ready to board.
When the announcement came, it directed the passengers to a gate
that had never been used before, on the lower level of the station. People
hurried for the stairs. Shuffling down into the bowels of the station, they
exchanged wary glances.
The train had come from Washigton. It wasn't too full. Everyone
got a seat.
The train pulled out on time. The hour was the 12:10. It was due
in Boston four-and-a-half hours later.
The air-conditioning was working. The cafe cars were well-stocked
with drinks and food. People settled in.
The train proceeded swiftly until 1:30, making several stops along
the way, the last being Bridgeport.
Twenty minutes north of Bridgeport, however, with no station in
sight, the train suddenly slowed and halted.
Everyone began to fidget, suspecting the worst. A few minutes after
the unscheduled stop, the voice of the condustor crackled over the PA.
"We have encountered a drawbridge stuck in the up position. We will
notify you of the progress of the situation."
A mass groan arose. Two sisters, with five toddelrs between them,
hung their heads. One of the children began to cry.
People got up and went for drinks. Soon there was a long line at
both cafe cars.
Every time a conductor appeared, he was deluged with questions.
"Is the bridge being worked on?" "When will it be fixed?" "What
alternatives are there?"
The answers the conductors gave were very unsatisfactory.
An hour passed. Half of another. The train had now been stopped
for as long as it had travelled. People were alternately angry, cyncical,
joking, resigned. Rumors began to arise that one of the cafe cars had run
out of soda. The prompted a new rush for what was left.
At 3:00, the PA came alive.
"We are backing up to Bridgeport. What will happen there has not
yet been determined. However, anyone leaving the train will not be allowed
back on."
Sputtering, shock, disbelief filled the cars.
The journey that had taken twenty minutes in forward took twice as
long in reverse.
It was now about 4:30. The trip had gone on for four-and-a-half
hours so far. However, the train was only an hour or so out of New York. It
should have been arriving in Boston just now.
At Bridgeport a few people left the train. Most stayed put, having
no choice. Someone asked, "Why don't they bus us?" Al;most as if on cue,
the voice of authority emerged from the loudspeakers.
"There has been a change in plans. We are going forward again to
the station before the drawbridge. There will be buses there to take
passengers around the damageed bridge, where they will board a new train."
There was scattered, weak applause and cheers. Since it was getting
so close to suppertime, people went for more drinks and food. Definite news
reports from people who returned indicated the cafe cars were almost empty of
provisions.
The train started up after an indefinite time and went forward. The
women with their five children looked exhausted, despite the fact that all
five kids were sleeping.
The train stopped at a tiny station not normally serviced by the
train.
"Please wait until told to leave."
An hour or so passed. It was now about 6:30.
The order to disembark came.
Hot furnace-air smacked the people in the face as they emerged. It
was still in the nineties, and the sun was high. The conductors stood on the
platform, pointing out the way for people. They looked exhausted and mean.
Down a set of iron stairs, under a rotting trestle where bums
obviously pissed, and up a slope into a parking lot, the passengers trooped,
carrying their luggage, some with just knapsacks, others bearing several
large cases. The sisters with their children had vanished in the mass.
There were over two hundred people.
At the top of the slope awaited three school-buses, their windows
open to the stagnant air.
People shoved and jostled for a place on the buses. Soon the aisles
were filled with luggage. The bus smelled like elementary school. People's
faces were sheened with sweat. Their eyes were glazed.
The first bus took off. The little Connecticut town it went through
seemed poor and in disrepair. People congregating outside seedy bars watched
the buses in disbelief. Someone on board said, "I feel like that woman in
ROMANCING THE STONE." Everyone knew what she meant.
The bus travelled on a road over the estuary that had blocked the
train's progress. It stopped. Hefting their bags, people climbed wearily
off. The bus left for another load.
They had been deposited at a crumbling asphalt drive, flanked by
shrubs. People trudged up it. The tar turned into a gravel parking lot with
tow or three cars in it. The new station came into view: a small wooden
structure, red paint peeling from it, consisting of a single room for the
train personnel, and a soda machine. A long concrete platform made up the
rest of the station. There was no shade.
At least a hundred people were already waiting there. It turned out
they had been the occupants of another stalled train. They were asked how
long they had been waiting.
"Two hours," they said.
Soon all the passengers of the twelve-ten from New York had been
delivered, to stand in the sun. Local policemen were there to keep order.
They began to be subject to verbal abuse. Some responded jokingly, others
with anger. The sun shone on them too.
It was now 7:30. The people were still only an hour-and-a-half away
from the city.
The sun began to sink. People waited; broiling, stupefied as
cattle.
They would not board a train until eight. It would be the 2:10 from
New York, crossing over the now-fixed drawbridge. Once aboard, they would
find an insufficiency of seats. Ahead lay a broken rail and an hour delay in
New Haven, to switch engines. They would not see Boston until midnight,
twelve hours after departure.
No one knew this now, although they suspected the worst. They had
no energy to think of the future. It took all their strength just to deal
with the heat coming up off the concrete platform.
There was a very fat man, about fifty, wearing green work pants
upheld by suspenders, a checked shirt, and glasses. He looked ready to
faint. To no one in particular he said the same thing, over and over.
"And they tell us they could evacuate people during war or an
emergency. How could they do it? It's impossible. How could they do it?
How could they even THINK they could do it?"
No one had an answer.
MORE FUN COUPLES by A.P. McQuiddy
Ted and Leigh KENNEDY
Cyrus and Jack VANCE
Jodi and Alan Dean FOSTER
H&R and Robert BLOCH
Desmond and Janet MORRIS
Ben and James HOGAN
Sam and Stephen DONALDSON
THIS MONTH'S PERSPECTIVE: "Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and
individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the
past would not be so seductive; its demands would be balanced by those of the
future.... But the future has no such reality... the future is but a figure
of speech, a specter of thought." -- TRANSPARENT THINGS, Vladimir Nabokov.
HOW DOES SHAKESPEARE FIT IN?
Although most people in the know concede that Thomas Pynchon is
really J.D. Salinger (Pynchon's first novel appeared the same year Salinger
fell silent), even these cognoscenti do not realize that B. Traven (TREASURE
OF THE SIERRA MADRE, etc.) was really Ambrose Bierce.
Consider that Bierce "disappeared" in Mexico the same year Traven
"moved" there from Germany, and you'll start to pick up the trail.
Now if we could only link up Traven and Salinger, we'd have a
portrait of an immortal writer who shifted identities every time he started
to receive too much attention....
LLLLLLLLLLLLL LETTERS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
FROM CHARLES PLATT: Once I do assimilate the content (of AA) I tend to feel
it lacks coherence. Your thoughts are often amusing, and your brief
quotations from readers' letters are sometimes fun, but there is a lack of
overall sense-of-intent. Maybe this is how my own stuff looks to readers; I
don't know. But as a reader myself, it bothers me. I used to enjoy CHEAP
TRUTH largely because, even when it seemed wrongheaded, it stood for
something. I have absolutely no idea what ASTRAL AVENUE stands for. Would
you be willing to enlighten us on this?
TENTATIVE RAISON D'ETRE NUMBER 1
"Only partly to satirize the Ermine Mayor's decree, Praeger de Pinto
issued a statement promising that if he were elected mayor the city would
enjoy the most beautiful winters it had ever experienced....
"Stunned at first, then hostile, people gradually came to believe
him....
"Where most politicians, including the Ermine Mayor, were quick to
promise things they would never deliver, such as clean streets or the absence
of crime, Praeger's approach was different, and he left the others far behind
in his wake. The Ermine Mayor might address a street gathering and say that
in his next term he would put 30 percent more police on the streets, step up
garbage collection, and lower taxes. Of course, everyone knew that in the
next mayoral term, no matter who was in office, thirty percent fewer police
would be on the street, the garbage piles would get higher and bigger, and
taxes would go up. But they applauded anyway....
"But then Praeger de Pinto would rise. He never talked about
garbage, electricity, or police. He only talked about winter, horses, and
the countryside. He spoke almost hypnotically about love, loyalty, and
esthetics. And just as they thought he was beginning to sound slightly
effete, he would get very tough... and lacerate the mayor... He would throw
low punches, where it hurt. He would be teribly cruel (they loved that) and
then he would surface again into his world of light....
"They thought, or so it was generally stated at the time, that if
they were going to be lied to, they might as well pick the liar who did it
best." -- WINTERS'S TALE, Mark Helprin.
TENTATIVE RAISON D'ETRE NUMBER 2
"DON'T TRY GATE-CRASHING A PARTY FULL OF BANKERS. BURN THE HOUSE DOWN!" --
The Housemartins.
TENTATIVE RAISON D'ETRE NUMBER 3
"Another policy of this column will be to give my friends all the best of it
and blast the incompetents that I don't like. There will be no deviation
from this policy." -- John O'Hara.
MORE LETTERS
From THE APOCRYPHAL LANDSBERG: Definitely one of the most amusing zines I've
ever seen.
From THE LETHAL CHOCHOLAK: This issue is really tops. Even if you make it
look like I offed Terry Carr with wisecracks.
From THE ELUSIVE ZAVGORODNY: I continue to get your fanzine. Thank you! I
understand this almost without knowing English, ha-ha. I liked its
strangeness, the unusuality of things. It has much bitter humor, it seems?
From THE THEORETICAL COBLEY: Thought that Bruce Sterling's letter was a bit
toothsome, but he made several important points: Gibsonian rip-offs,
potential extrapolative input, and genre structures (owing existence mostly
to ultra-commercial non-esthetics). Following any one of these paths
obsessively across the conceptual terrain leads not necessarily to dead-ends,
but circular stagnation and alienation.
From THE METAPHYSICAL HOGAN: Glad to see everybody's not taking things to
seriously in this postcyberpunk age. The problem with most science fiction
writers is that they ain't got rhythm. Surrealists have been a bigger
influence on me than sf writers, anyway. What I'm mainly concerned with is
the way technology has sped up and multiplied the myth-making process. The
planet is overloaded with clashing mythologies,. Should be fun.
From THE EXPLANATORY HLAVATY: I consider to enjoy your zine. Discovering
that there were two different writers named William Jon Waktins and Walter
Jon Williams, and that neither of them was the other, did make my life a bit
less confused. (It happened about a year ago.) // A few slight corrections
to Luke McGuff's letter: The Jefferson Airplane line was "In loyalty to
their kind, they cannot tolerate our MINDS," and I believe it comes from John
Wyndham's THE CHRYSALIDS, also known as REBIRTH.
From THE PLAINTIVE PLATT: Please don't publish any more postcards from
Texas.
From THE SPECULATIVE REILLY: The most important question is: what is the
significance of "OZ"? Is is short for "Order of the Zoroastrians or
Zookeepers or Zygotes?" Does it stand for some sound? "OZ," the sound of
the body politic sighing? Are the letters reversed? Does "ZO" mean
anything? I'm worried.
From THE ENTHUSIASTIC MCQUIDDY: Takling about the ITGO article. I think
that though you build up your argument well, in the end there is no real meat
to it... I heartily disagree with your assertion that "there are only so
many sources." Limits? On the FUTURE? You must be kidding....// Hey! I
rubbed off the glitter on my "Clarion Bonus Rub-off" and it said I won an
all-expense-paid trip to Bermuda with Fawn Hall!// Keep those little pearls
of wisdom from the likes of Aldiss and Greenland coming -- they're great.//
Michael Bishop's "Bishop's Move" was a great companion peice to Rudy's
"Access To Tools." Hope to see more from both of them.// Casting advice (for
the Iran-contra movie): Secord -- G. Gordon Liddy; Fawn Hall -- Vanna White;
Ollie North -- Clint Eastwood: Reagan -- Jimmy Stewart; Poindexter -- Don
Ameche. I also think we could place Jay Leno in the role of that young guy
who just testified -- without immunity, I believe -- and admitted that he
helped destroy files. // You're not the first to confuse WJ Williams and WJ
Watkins... in the meantime, try to avoid "retinal intercourse."// It's about
time somewhere, someone had the guts to attack Baum's Oz, and lay off Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson for a while.// I've got to admit that I like Michael
Cobley's suggestion that what Gibson and Sterling are doing is "SF-as-theory"
instead of "SF as prediction."
*************
Dear Mr. Di-Fi:
Arf! Are you losin' it amigo, or what? "Fluffy the Cyberpup" is a
fraud! F-R-A-U-D! The dead giveaway was the Austin, Texas postmark -- when
you yourself said (correctly) that "I don't live in Texas."
I sent that snapshot to my cousin, B. Maurice Setter (who does live
in Austin), some months back. I see he cleverly excised the rest of the
photo, including the bomb crater, banana plant, and Milly Muffins, a cute,
tough-as-toenails dingo who I met Down Under and persuaded to join me here.
I'm really pissed at Maurice for pulling this stunt. For the record, the
first story I ever wrote WAS entitled "Barking Chrome," but I never sent it
to NEW PATHWAYS. (If I find out Maurice is submitting MY work under his
name, I'll sue him for plagiarism -- AFTER I rip his throat out!) I was not,
however, published in the MIRRORSHADES anthology, nor do I expect my work to
appear in any subsequent "sequels" to it. I am currently researching my
first novel, DESERTED CITIES OF THE BARK.
Also, I would like to clarify a point. I am not a card-carrying
member of the Mirrorshades Movement, but I am associated with some people who
are. (I, myself, do not wear mirrorshades. Although, in the unexpurgated
version of the picture, Milly IS wearing a pair.) However, I AM a member of
the rogue off-shoot of this literary wave -- we call ourselves "The
Wayfarers."
And please, don't send me the Braun food processor/cyberdeck -- I've
got four already, one of which has an espresso attachment. Send it to
Maurice instead. I hope he chokes on
it...
Best wishes for "AA",
The Renegade Rover himself,
Husky Du
Managua, Nicaragua
May 30, 1987
(translated from the Spanish by G. Welshspring Corgi)
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From Rhode Island: Where Quahogs Outnumber Humans -- it's
********************
ASTRAL AVENUE
********************
Number 2 December 1986 Sycophant Sam Sez: "Keep on Trucklin'!"
Surf Forecast: Waves of Hyperbole, Followed by Resounding Crashes and Froth
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
Much to our chagrin, our independence was not able to survive for more
than one issue before we were taken over by Mysterious Forces. The source of
our distress is the Organization of Apocryphal Power. (Readers desiring more
information on this group are advised to turn to Italo Calvino's IF ON A
WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER. However, be forewarned that CALVINO DID NOT DIE
OF NATURAL CAUSES....)
The permanent representative of the OAP now lives beneath our kitchen
sink, and demands final right of censorship over all material herein. What's
worse, he won't tell us if he's working for the Wing of Shadow or the Wing of
Light. Still, we persist....
HOW I ALMOST SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION
One day this summer, I received an unusual piece of unsolicited mail.
At first, I thought it was one of those slick inducements to purchase a
time-share in some vacation condo. A quick scan of the glossy brochure turned
up boilerplate phrases like "one of these prizes has been registered in your
name", "quiet retreat", "luxurious surroundings", "easy terms", and
"congenial company."
I was ready to toss the third-class mailing into the trash, when I
noticed a boldface injunction at the bottom of the text:
ONLY SF WRITERS NEED APPLY
I was bemused. Was this some kind of inclusive self-segregation, the
obverse of the warning NO IRISH NEED APPLY, earlier in this century? What
kind of "community" was this brochure advertising? Reading more closely, I
was astonished to discover --
But let me jump directly to my firsthand experiences at SHARE-A-WORLD
KAMPS, INC. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Bigg & Slymi, Korporate
Publishers).
I pulled up in my rented car to the locked gate in the razor-wire-topped
fence surrounding the sylvan acreage high in the Adirondacks. Beyond the
chainlink barrier, I could see scattered rustic buildings, reminiscent of
those in a Boy Scout camp. As soon as I stepped from my car, a woman emerged
from the security booth outside the enclosure. She wore a coiled whip at her
belt.
"Hello," she said pleasantly enough. "Can I help you?"
I flourished the ad that had drawn me there, and explained that I was
interested in seeing the accomodations and activities described therein.
The woman scrutinized me closely. "Are you an SF writer? I don't
recognize your face."
I recited my modest credits.
"Oh, I suppose you'll do," she grudgingly conceded. "Just leave your car
there -- no one will bother it."
I could easily believe that: the place seemed deader than the latest
Heinlein novel. Still, I pocketed my car keys.
Once inside, the woman locked the gate behind us. I thought then to ask
her name. She introduced herslef with the name of a Famous Editor, which I
won't use here. Let's just call her "The Dominatrix."
"So," I said, trying to ingratiate myself, "this is the place where all
those shared-universe anthologies and novels come from. It seems hard to
believe -- "
"This is the place," she replied. "We do everything right here, from
brainstorming the parameters of the shared universe -- characters, locales,
physical laws, whatever -- right down to fabricating the actual wordage
required to fill up a volume. We can turn out something as big and glossy as
MEDEA, or as cheap and tinny as HEROES IN HELL."
"Fascinating," I lied. The absence of visible activity was starting to
get on my nerves. The place seemed suddenly less like a summer camp and more
like a POW camp. I imagined I could hear chipper Limeys whistling "Bridge on
the River Kwai."
"What would you like to see first?" she asked.
"Uh, how about the Parameter Fabrication Plant?"
The Dominatrix led me to a log building without screens or doors.
Inside, chained to wooden benches, sat a corps of failed Ph.D's from various
disciplines, whose duty it was to concoct hare-brained anthropological,
botanical, sociological, mythological, stellar, etc. gimmicks which could
form the basis for a Shared World Series. All were typing busily into
networked word-processors.
"We use only the latest equipment," said the Dominatrix. "And if their
ideas aren't stale enough, we can even run them through special software that
will mix in a few old proven concepts from the days of Twayne Triplets."
"Wonderful. And the writers can tap into these guidelines from their
own terminals -- ?"
"You've got it. Let's peek in on them."
In a similar building, under similar conditions, sat dozens of writers,
laboriously pecking away. Not one bothered to look up when we entered, so
apathetic were they, so eager to achieve the Kamp Kwota, which the Dominatrix
informed me was set at a modest 10,000 words per day. Over the hunched
shoulders of the scriveners, I read snatches of Shared-Universal Prose:
endless tedious lines about thieves, rock 'n' roll elves, fuxes, dead heroes,
and wizards.
My guide had stepped away to crack her whip over a writer who had slowed
up from exhaustion. I took the opportunity to question one of the poor
wretches.
"Don't you hate and abhor with all your soul the idea of subordinating
your own imagination and skills to some marketing concept aimed at
twelve-year-olds?"
"Say wha?" he replied, and I knew the pitiful drudge was nearly
brain-dead.
The Dominatrix returned and led me outside. "So, are you interested?"
I stalled for time as I strolled back toward the gate and freedom.
"What's the advance and royalty rate?"
"Advance? Royalties? There's nothing like that. Room and board is it.
You're doing this to establish your name in the public eye, and for the
'fun.'" She looked me up and down witheringly. "And believe me, someone of
your insignificant bibliography could really benefit by this."
We were now at the gate. "Uh, great, I'll sign on. But I left my
favorite fountain pen in the car -- "
A tremor in my voice must have betrayed my real intentions. "That's
okay," she countered, "I've got a pen."
I hit the fence four feet up, clawing for the top.
I lost the seat of my pants on the razor-wire, and one earlobe to the
Dominatrix's whip, but I was roaring off down the alpine rutted road before
she could stop me.
I counted myself lucky to escape at all.
IT'S A WYLDE, WYLDE LIFE
Among all the new writers receiving extravagant praise, I have yet to
see the name of Thomas Wylde. His stories in ASIMOV'S and F&SF which I have
had the pleasure to read have been gonzo fantasies exhibiting humor, wit and
sharp invention. Check out "Magic Cookies" (F&SF, 12/85) and hope someone
convinces Mr. Wylde to write a novel.
INVASION OF THE FEMALE POP STARS
Take a close look at the Giger illustrations for Jack Dann's story
"Tattoos" in the November OMNI. Is it borrowed from the cover of Debbie
Harry's KOO KOO, or am I missing something? And isn't that a portrait of
Annie Lennox on the cover of SKEEN'S LEAP by Jo Clayton? What next? Barbra
Streisand for a Connie Willis story?
AMERICA AS JOYSTICK
One must always replenish one's figures of speech from new technology.
It is with this tenet in mind that I propose the simile above, in the light
of the recent November elections and the precipitous drop in Reagan's
popularity due to the Iran-contra mess.
Joysticks boast a feature known as "defeatable self-centering." They
may be pushed to the right or left, but they always spring back to the
center. Thus America. We learn once again, as we did when the 'Sixties died,
that mo matter how far right or left the country is pushed, it always returns
to the Great Sane and Mediocre Center.
Now if we could just keep everyone's finger off the firing button....
FIRST-NAME BASIS
And while we're on the topic of politics, what about a lesson we could
learn from the Philippines? I'm referring, of course, to how everyone from
peasants to ministers calls the Aquino administration "the Cory government."
This shows an admirable lack of respect for all politicians, which we
could well emulate. I, for one, plan to refer only to "the Ronnie
government" from now on. (Locally, I will speak of "the Joey city government"
and "the Eddie state government.")
Exercise your right to nicknames now!
BEST GRAFFITO OF THE MONTH -- DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER SELF-REFERENTIAL CATEGORY
"Graffiti is a political act!"
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS (Replies to Many Queries of General Interest --
Valuable Suggestions from Readers)
T.E.D. KLEIN, on my Stephen King essay: "...a courageous piece of work." --
Well, Ted, I was just spouting off, but thanks anyway. I was guided by that
famous folk-saying, "Even a Krazy Kat may look at a King!"
CHARLES PLATT, on ditto: "...there have been some stories of his, such as
'Apt Pupil,' which I feel bring to life certain aspects of the human psyche,
and unpleasant qualities in American culture, better than almost any writer I
have ever read."
-- I don't deny King an occasional shining moment, I guess. What I
object to is calling his work "art." There are plenty of beautiful natural
objects -- seashells, spiderwebs -- which can not be called art because they
are simply blind expressions of their creators' genes. King's work strikes
me as much the same, only he fails more often than he succeeds. I resent
plowing through piles of crap -- a la the output of the writing program
RACTER -- just to find the rare gem.
WHEREIN I SHED 96 TEARS
Okay folks, I realize this issue is coming out less than a month after
the first (to avoid the Xmas postal glut), but still and all, I received no
correspondence other than the above, after a couple of weeks. All you
SLUGABEDS and PROCRASTINATORS out there, lissen up: if you have any interest
in this VANITY PROJECT of mine, please respond. (If you hate it, a simple
LETTER BOMB will suffice....) Your missive doesn't even have to be
COMPREHENSIBLE. A simple POSTCARD with your THUMBPRINT will do. Or emulate
the two PARAGONS OF EPISTOLARY VIRTUE cited
above....
ASTRAL AVENUE Paul Di Filippo
2 Poplar Street
Providence, RI 02906
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Wherever SF goes -- Astral Avenue has been there and left!
*******************
ASTRAL AVENUE
*******************
Number 3 Jan 1987. THIS MONTH'S ODDS: Casey-type "seizure," 2-1;
resignation, 3-1; impeachment, 50-1; NSC coup, even.
"You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think."
CURRENT NEWS AND VIEWS: The Fortnight's Pen Pictures Illustrating the Dark
and the Bright Side of Civilization
Publisher's note: Already there has been some misunderstanding about our
intentions in publishing AA. Let us state what we thought was obvious from
the start. ASTRAL AVENUE is simply a time-consuming, money-wasting folly
intended to provide an outlet for spare energies and thoughts, squeezed
inbetween what must forever be deemed our more important work, namely the
composition of fiction. Additionally, it is intended to encourage
communication among Diverse Deviants and provide an occasional laugh,
frisson, epiphany, or sour stomach. It is not some kind of calculatedly
offensive broadside meant to topple the status quo. The status quo is quite
capable of undermining itself, thank you, through inanition and boredom.
(The preceding has been vetted by the Organization of Apocryphal Power, which
has established a transplenary nexus inside our shower stall.)
Trash, Flash, and Time The Avenger
The stack of SF magazines balanced atop the stolen plastic milk crates
came tumbling down atop my head as I was bending over the examine the
October, 1958 issue of SUPER SCIENCE-FICTION (containing "Blood By Transit,"
author, Harlan Ellison ('The teleport worked, but at risk of hideous death!')
and "The Fight With the Gorgon" by Robert Silverberg ('The weird monster had
extraordinary powers!')). I was knocked ass over teakettle, and rendered more
unconscious than usual.
When I came to, lying amid the flaking pulp, I was mysteriously moved to
open the April 1977 issue of ANALOG, which I had never previously read. In
"The Reference Library," then being manhandled by Lester del Rey, I
encountered the following:
"UNEARTH (issue #1) is not at all recommended.
"This should have been expected. The whole idea of a magazine by
previously unpublished writers is wrong. The other magazines pay far better
and offer more prestige. Any new writer with a good story is going to try
for the better markets first, as a rule. What's left, since all magazines of
science fiction welcome new writers, won't have much to offer."
Besides being pissed that my own story -- my first fiction sale -- which
was included in UNEARTH #1 wasn't even thought worthy of specific
denigration, I was struck by the whole asininity, the smarmy elitism, of del
Rey's argument, and how history has proved him wrong.
Let's look first at the utter illogic of what del Rey was saying.
The field needs markets, of whatever sort. One has only to read
Malzberg's essay "Memoir from Grub Street" -- wherein he calculates, based on
personal editorial experience, that there are hundreds of publishable stories
going unprinted every month -- to realize that there simply aren't enough
empty slots for all worthy contenders. To lambaste a magazine simply because
it specialized in "first sales" is abysmally stupid. (And remember that
UNEARTH's stated policy was always to publish future works by those it
"discovered," so that it hardly differed, in the end, from the other mags).
Putting aside this paper tiger, let's look at how UNEARTH is beginning
to shape up in the eyes of history. After all, it's been ten years now.
Folks, this is the really sweet part! Have a gander at this list of
authors initially published by the magazine del Rey turned thumbs down on.
My name leads because I am the sole survivor of issue #1: Di Filippo,
Blaylock, Sucharitkul, Gibson, and Rucker. Not a bad little roster, in my
book. Now, admittedly, these folks would probably have gone on to be
published without UNEARTH. But the plain historical fact is that UNEARTH was
there and got 'em first, for which service we are forever indebted to it.
Just to twist the knife a little, let's make a completely arbitrary,
biased, and slanted comparison of the list above with the names of the
nonestablished writers published in the April '77 ANALOG: Robert Freitas,
George Ewing, Stephen Leigh, Roy Prosterman, Bernard Deitchman.
What a fuckin' joke! By any objective measure, ANALOG should be
retroactively closed down, and UNEARTH resurrected with a million-dollar
budget! But of course, I am not going to argue that, since it's contrary to
my first point: the more markets, the better. I'd have to be as
hog-ignorant as del Rey to do it.
All of which brings me to the point alluded to in the title of this
article. Every literary judgement is conditional. We never know nuthin'
fersure until history casts the final ballot. Melville was dead and
out-of-print until some keen-eyed twentieth-century critics were turned on to
him and turned on others. It should inspire us all with a little humility.
See me again about this in twenty years.
HOW MUCH DID YOU GET FOR YOUR SOUL? or, First I Look At the Purse
In the last issue, I expressed the desire that Thomas Wylde write a
novel. Well, recent news should teach me about who might be listening to
one's hasty wishes.
In LOCUS #311, we are told that Mr. Wylde will be writing one novel in a
series of books developed and plotted by Roger Zelazny.
Put plainly, this sucks.
Let me insert a few disclaimers first. 1). I realize writers must eat
and pay the rent. 2). I have never been offered such a job, and might have
a sour-grapes attitude, altho I doubt it. 3). I have no right to run Mr.
Wylde's career.
With that out of the way, let me say: This still sucks.
The fact that a marvelous new writer has an easier time debuting as part
of someone else's pre-packaged line is disgusting. I want to see a Thomas
Wylde novel, not second-hand Zelazny!
OUR ARABIAN COUSINS
From ARABIA by Jonathan Raban, pp269 - 271.
"A man was introduced to me as 'the only science fiction writer in
Arabia'.... I asked the writer of science fiction to tell me about his work.
"'My last book is about a world under the sea. It has its own minerals.
Enough wealth. It would like to live peacefully by itself, but there are
two other worlds fighting over it. They want these valuable minerals. They
are very powerful, these worlds, they have very advanced technologies, they
have much money, they need the minerals of the world under the sea, and they
make war over them. It is a war-of-the-worlds book, you see.'"
"'And the world under the sea caught between two great powers is really
Egypt?'"
"'No, it is imaginary. It is a world that I make up in my
imagination.'"
"'But it is a political metaphor...'"
"'It is not political, it is science fiction.'"
"'Perhaps, though, you are free to say things in the form of science
fiction that you couldn't say in a realistic novel?'"
"Yes, I think a writer of science fiction is free, because his world is
all in his imagination.'"
"'Policemen,'" said the poet, "'are not clever men. I think it is a
good thing that they don't understand metaphors.'"
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
What connection is there between Poul Anderson's story and the
mercenary/spy Sam Hall, recently arrested in Nicaragua?
Does Rudy Rucker's recent move to Los Gatos, California, have anything
to do with the fact that Albert Hakim, fiscal intermediary in the Iragua
deal, also lives there?
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS
Bruce Sterling: Your attack on King proves you know how to pick on guys your
own size.
-- Actually Bruce, you've hit the nail on the head. Both Steverino and I
have been topping the dreaded 190 mark lately, although he chooses to belt
Below-the-Paunch, whereas I opt for the Fred Mertz Look. Many's the time
that my phone's rung at midnight, with the Maine-iac on the other end,
begging for my recipe for Lo-Cal Brownies. But, being a tuff guy, I leave
him whimpering.
Ellen Datlow: The illo for Jack Dann's "Tattoos" is an outtake of the
Deborah Harry album-cover sitting. We never commission art. The art dept
tries to find art that fits the story from material in existence.
-- While I generally enjoy OMNI's juxtaposing of, say, a Magritte with a
story, I have trouble when the image chosen is one that bears heavy
commercial connotations. As an extreme example: I enjoyed Gervasio
Gallardo's covers for the old Ballantine adult fantasy line, but I wouldn't
want one of his Grand Marnier ads on the cover of my book.
Rudy Rucker: I've also thought what you said about King for a long time now.
I've always found his bullies unrealistic -- stuck in childhood.
Michael G. Adkisson: I agree with your analysis of Stephen King. It's
disgusting that a writer of his rank should receive so much fame while others
of high literary caliber are shit upon. But... I guess all the big chunks
always float to the top, don't they? (How's that for some King dialogue?)
-- Mike, we predict a big career for you as scriptwriter for teen films such
as PORKY'S XXI.
David Clear: Is it true that if you live on Astral Avenue you can go out
without getting out of bed?
-- Yes Dave, the residents of Astral Avenue CAN project their souls.
However, as we mentioned in issue #1, the eponymous Providence street is a
mundane, middle-class block. The inhabitants, when travelling astrally,
tend not to journey to Far Yuggoth or Beyond the Gates of Sleep, but to
church bake-sales, Jaycee meetings, and the malls, where they give the
incarnate patrons the heebie-jeebies.
Paul Di Filippo
2 Poplar Street
Providence, RI 02906
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From Providence: The city that made 3/4 of the Talking Heads what they are
today!
it's....
******************
ASTRAL AVENUE
******************
Number 4 Feb 1987
BUMPER STICKER OF THE MONTH: "My other car is a piece of shit, too."
The 1st time, tragedy; the 2nd time, farce; the 3rd time, docudrama
CURRENT NEWS AND VIEWS
The Fortnight's Pen Pictures Illustrating the Dark and the Bright Side of
Civilization! The Search For Big Bucks
Reading time 11 minutes 35 seconds
Publisher's Note
At the Post Office, we mail our overseas copies of ASTRAL AVENUE as
"Printed Matter," to take advantage of cheaper rates. (Every cent counts
around here. Literally. We only finished out Christmas shopping by rolling
2000 pennies and cashing them in.) Are we lying to the postal clerks? AA is
produced, after all, on a Smith-Corona TP-II PRINTER, which makes it 'printed
matter,' right? But that's only stage one; after, the original is xeroxed...
Is xerox 'printing'? Or is printing only what happens at a printshop,
or at a Giant Conglomerate like Books And Sausages, Inc.? We suspect that
such questions are going to rapidly take on more importance, as desktop
publishing proliferates.
Today, semantics -- tomorrow, lawsuits!
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY UNANTICIPATED
I had planned to subject you all to another of my stupefyingly cogent
essays, here in this space. But making my point required hunting down a
quote in COUNT ZERO, and when I couldn't find it after half an hour, I gave
up. Your reprieve is only temporary, tho. I'm still looking.
Meanwhile....
THE OLD SF THE NEW SF
-------------- -------------------
Frederick's of Hollywood..........Victoria's Secret
Elvis P. .........................Elvis C.
Ripple ...........................Bruce Juice
Popsicle .........................Tofutti
Mom 'n' Pop Store ................The Mall
Underwood.........................Laserwriter
Moon Landing......................Challenger
Eggbeater.........................Cuisinart
"Nerves"..........................Chernobyl
P. F. Flyers......................Reeboks
John Wayne........................John Waters
Marilyn...........................Madonna
Cadillac..........................Hyundai
Analog............................Digital
The Clap..........................AIDS
Einstein..........................Hawking
Vietnam...........................Nicaragua
Walter Winchell...................Hunter S. Thompson
"The Untouchables"................"Miami Vice"
The Crash of '29..................The Clash of '77
Hungary...........................Afghanistan
Velveeta.........................."Blue Velvet"
Stalin............................Gorbachev
Moxie.............................Slice
Nazis.............................Contras
Phlogiston........................Oxygen
Zap guns..........................Rail guns
Davy Crockett.....................Bernie Goetz
Valium............................Beta-Blockers
THE DEMISE OF YOUR BASIC ROCK LEGEND
1960's: Clapton is God.
1970's: Eno is God.
1980's: Prince talks to God.
Pet Peeve
I am going to share this with you because I am cruel and sadistic. Once
you are sensitized to this common grammatical error, you will hear it or read
it a hundred times a day. It will begin to drive you as crazy as it has
driven
me.
Pay attention.
The word "as" has many uses. One is to form similes. For example: "As
stupid as Reagan, Meese is more malevolent."
"As" can also substitute for "although." Consider the following
sentence: "Although he is stupid, Reagan is not THAT stupid." Make the
substitution, and this becomes:
"Stupid as Reagan is, he is not THAT stupid." The adjective moves up
front for emphasis.
No second "as" is necessary. There is no comparison being made. It
would be redundant to have it. YOU DO NOT NEED IT. DON'T PUT IT THERE.
TELL FRIENDS AND STRANGERS NOT TO DO IT. SOON, ENLIGHTENMENT WILL O'ERSPREAD
THE GLOBE....
Accepting The Award For Militaristic Propaganda Will Be....
It has recently come to my attention that the Cannes Film Festival
offers an award for "Supreme Intellectual Achievement." This is a marvelous
award. (I'm sure it sounds even better in French.) What I want to know is:
Why doesn't SF, the "literature of ideas," have such an honor?
What good do the Hugo and other awards do, even assuming they represent
honest polls? Novels with nothing in common are tossed into the same ring
and forced to fight it out. Why not establish different categories,
depending on the author's intentions and results?
Herewith, my divisions and
nominations:
SUPREME INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT: No award this year
SCALDING FEMINIST RHETORIC: Russ
WHIMSICAL LADIES' ROOM BANTER: Willis
SENSITIVE MALE INSIGHTS: Robinson (K.S.)
BIG COJONES: Pournelle
MOST TIMES THROUGH THE FOOD-CHAIN: Zahn
CLOSEST APPROX. TO ANTHRO. THESIS: Le Guin
LEGEND IN HIS OWN MIND: Robinson (S.)
------------------------------------------------------------
The Artist As RNA: Don't pro-scribe / Don't pre - scribe / Just tran - scribe
------------------------------------------------------------
***** CONTEST ***** CONTEST ****** CONTEST ****** CONTEST *
WIN embarrassing picture of The Publisher by being the first to finish this
story in 500 words or less, being careful to take account of Edward Teller
and of Jack and Neal driving through the test
range.
INSTABILITY
by Rudy Rucker and YOUR NAME HERE
Jack and Neal, loose and blasted, sitting on the ramshackle porch of Bill
Burroughs' shack. Burroughs is sitting catatonic in his orgone box, a copy
of the Mayan codices in his lap; he's already fixed H twice today. Neal is
cleaning the seeds out of a shoebox full of maryjane. Time is thick and slow
as honey. In the distance the shrimp-packers' noon whistle blows. Burroughs
rises to his feet like a figure in a well-oiled Swiss clock. "There is
scrabbling," he tells Jack. "There is scrabbling behind the walls. Bastards
made a hole somewhere. You ever read Lovecraft's 'Colour Out Of Space,'
son?"
"I read it in prison," says Neal, puffing up his chest with pride.
"Dig, Bill, your mention of that document ties in so exactly with my most
recent thought mode that old Jung would hop a hardon."
"Mwheee-heee-heee," says Jack. "The Shadow knows."
"I'm talking about this bomb foolishness," says Burroughs, stalking
stifflegged over to stand on the steps. "The shrimpers' noon whistle is
getting us all ready for WWIII, and if we're all ready for THAT, then we're
ready to be a great civilian army, yes, soldiers for Joe McCarthy and Harry
Anslinger, poised to stomp out the reds 'n' queers 'n' dopefiends. Science
brings us this. I wipe my queer junkie ass with science, boys. The Mayans
had it aaaaall figured out a loooong time ago. Now take this Von Neumann
fellow...."
"You mean Django Reinhardt?" asks Neal. "Or Wilhelm Reich?"
"William Bendix," says Jack. "Man, this is your life, their life, my
life, a dog's life, God's life, the Life of Riley. Von Neumann of the
desert, Neal, it was in the Sunday paper we were rolling sticks on in
Tuscaloosa, I got an eidetic memory flash of it, brother, just before you
nailed that cute Dairy Queen waitress who wanted to rim you with her
retrousse Joan Crawford nose."
=======================================
THANX, RUDY, for your contribution. We're sure that after our readers
ingest enough Industrial-Strength Brain-Drano, they'll be up to the
challenge. Results in future issues. Be there, or be square!
PEOPLE YOU NEVER SEE TOGETHER, BECAUSE THEY'RE REALLY ONE AND THE
SAME
Ed Bryant ..................... Father Guido Sarducci
Robert Heinlein ............... King Hussein of Jordan
Michael Bishop ................ Leonard Nimoy
Robert Silverberg ............. Martin Scorsese
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS ::: All inquiries on subjects of general interest
will be answered in these columns
BRUCE STERLING: ASTRAL AVENUE is your chance to offend your contemporaries
and coworkers.
-- We know Bruce speaks from his own tragic experience as Locker Room
Attendant under Vinnie O. of CHEAP TRUTH, but still we can't believe that
anyone would take umbrage at our harmless rag. The whole SF community is
one happy brotherhood of dedicated, selfless, joshing -- HOLY SHIT, someone
just crept up behind me and stuck a fuckin' machete in my back! Hold on, we
shall return...
COLIN GREENLAND: What's a quahog anyway?
-- We would call this a typical Anglo-American mixup, Colin -- except that
no one outside of the Northeast knows what a quahog is either. We're sure
that you were the only one honest enough to admit it. A quahog is a big
tasty bivalve indigenous to RI. It makes a great stew, or, if its guts are
taken out, cooked, mixed with a bread-stuffing, and reinserted into the
half-shell, a "stuffy." Its shells form nifty ashtrays or pseudo-gravel for
driveways. It is our pride and joy, kind of like the Queen's Corgis.
Several dozen stinking, dripping samples are on their way via mail to your
doorstep.
MISHA CHOCHOLAK (by the way -- it was just a flesh wound, folks) sends a
non-verbal response, consisting of a sheet of paper covered with gunpowder
burns, punctuated with bullet-holes, and bearing the name of this mag smeared
in what appears to be blood.
-- Thanx, Misha. We hope it's a compliment. (When they boost the reward for
her to $10,000, we have dibs.)
ORSON SCOTT CARD: ASTRAL AVENUE looks like it's going to be a wonderful
zine, but I couldn't find any information in it on how to go about
subscribing.
-- AA searches out people on its own, Scott, no matter where they hide, and
no amount of sweet-talkin' will get it otherwise. However, large sums of
money will secure it just fine.
YOSHIO KOBAYASHI: I like this kind of fanzine. -- And we like you, Yoshio.
We also like Yoshio's dot-matrix printer, which is really Hi-Quality.
MARC LAIDLAW ... a glimmer of light in the general blear! ... out of milk
here, but eggnog tastes just fine on shredded wheat... I would like to order
one of your reader's doze alarms altho fantasy does not strike me as the
greatest offender. I would reserve that position for ANALOG.
I don't buy the superiority of SF over fantasy. I think the two should
be considered not as separate entities, but as a ratio. We could talk in the
future of the F/SF ratio, and diagnose the field in these terms, just as a
doctor diagnoses one's immune status in terms of the ratio of helper T-cells
to suppressors....
Fantasy plays stupid, SF pretends to be a know-it-all. Each can be
equally irritating...
My personal favorite grafitto: METHADONE ZENSLAVES....
Your depiction of the timeshared world was dead-on. Authorship is a
lonely profession... Perhaps someday, on a computer net, half-a-dozen
writers can unroll the word-music from their fingertips simultaneously while
some Eno filters the sentences, weaves them together, and squeezes them into
mass-marketable little cubes. In that case, would you rather be the engineer
or the writer?
....Costello fan? Have you noticed the imagistic similarity of "Tokyo
Storm Warning" to Gibson's futuristic Japan?
The appearance of Annie Lennox on a Jo Clayton novel should hardly
surprise anyone -- I believe she's signed a contract with DAW to present a
showcase of tough feminist novels, "Annie Lennox Presents..."
... this trend in literature is simply the trickling down of corporate
advertising policies long apparent on TV and audible on radio... I truly
believe that one day soon we'll be wading through the latest Stephen King
by-product only to find that -- as the flashlight dies and the carbuncular
kid finds himself alone on the haunted path -- it's an ad for Duracell
batteries.
I'm hoping to get Emilio Estevez and Roseanna Arquette to star in my
next book, which will actually be an elaborate plug for Tiparillos.... MARC
LAIDLAW
-- Marc sent us a letter longer than the average issue of ASTRAL AVENUE, from
which we've excerpted. As to your points, Marc: I am an inveterate lover
and writer of fantasy, and have been the former for approximately twenty
years, long before the boom. I will let your ingenious analogy stand for my
feelings too. Not only has Costello doubtlessly read Gibson, but probably
also Mick Jones (cf: BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE's "Sony"). We look forward to
reading your sell-out novel, Marc. May we propose the title: "Desperately
Seeking Cash Before the Repo Man Comes"?
JOHN KESSEL: "Astral Avenue" should be on the Monopoly Board.
-- We are the property that pays low rents, throws noisy parties, leaves
empty beer bottles in the yard, and has a '69 Cadillac up on cinder blocks in
the driveway.
TERRY CARR: I thought the line "You can lead a whore to culture, but you
can't make her think" was sexist.
-- Terry sent a much longer letter, which will be featured next issue, but we
wanted to deal with this now. Terry, we generally favor Wit, Abrasiveness,
and Shock Value over Politically Correct Androgyny, but you've completely
misread us here. By "whore" we meant everyone from Eleventh Avenue street
tarts to Port Authority male hustlers, and we were using "her" in the
feminist sense of subsuming all humanity, just as "his" has been
traditionally used. So you see our little epigram was actually sly feminist
propaganda!
*********************
ASTRAL AVENUE
Paul Di Filippo
2 Poplar Street
Providence, RI 02906
*********************
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From Rhode Island: Mobsters 'n' Lobsters
it's
*************
ASTRAL AVENUE
*************
No. 5. Mar '87
Plain living, high thinking. -- Billy Wordsworth.
When the money gets big, the SF pros turn sane.
It's always darkest just before the shitstorm.
The only thing more humiliating than selling out is trying to sell out and
being
refused.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE.
As you can see from the three lead articles below, it's been a busy,
busy year so far in Periodical World. What with all this talk of writers
spanking the deity, editors performing the Dance of the Seven Veils, and
Rambo Reviewers slaughtering gooks, our heads fairly spin. One wonders what
Joe Author and Jane Editor can possibly do in the upcoming months to top the
wild 'n' wacky events of the fledgling year. Without a doubt, tho, we'll
find out.
As for ourselves, we've spend a wonderful month waiting hand and
foot on egregiously elitist Brown University students, in the capacity of
Bookstore Clerk during beginning-of-semester rush. Nothing can take away
one's respect for today's factory-style higher education faster than
confronting some of its products. High point of our tenure was ACTUALLY
TOUCHING COSIMA VOM BULOW'S HAND, as she paid for her books. (She was taking
one history course, and 18th century lit. We hope to sell this information
to the NY Post, so hands off!) Also deadening to the sensibilities
was handling approximately 500 books per hour, until they become merely
tiresome items like canned goods or car-parts. We even adopted the malicious
proposal once critic tossed at DHALGREN, mentioning that perhaps we could
just set up scales and sell the texts by the pound.
C'est la vie, dude.
KING SEZ HE'S POP TO GOD
"But I haven't been in loco parentis to anybody but God for a very
long time now..." Stephen King, OMNI, 2/87.
-- We'd like Steve to know that "in loco parentis" means "in charge
of," not "under the charge of." Considering he used the phrase correctly a
couple of sentences before the one quoted, we were baffled. (By the way, MR.
King reveals himself to be on the side of the angels in the censorship debate
-- but precision still counts.)
EDITOR BARES ALL
"A magazine editor, for example, described with relish how she
begins taking off her clothes the moment she steps inside her apartment and
completes the process by the time she reaches her kitchen. Neither the light
of day not open drapes deters her." THE NY TIMES, 1/8/87.
-- Anyone we know?
ANALOG: "GENOCIDE RULES OK!"
"Barry has been picking up the same message I give my biology
students -- if they could arrange today to wipe out nine-tenths, 4.5 billion,
of the Earth's human population, they would save more people than they would
kill, thanks to the foreseeable consequences of worldwide population growth.
Perhaps we need an international Jim Jones, with cyanide-laced Kool-Aid for
the billions." Tom Easton, ANALOG 3/87.
-- Maybe our irony-detector is on the fritz, but we don't see this as a
laudable attempt at black humor in the staid pages of ANALOG, but rather a
true expression of their weltanschauung. Tell us what you
think.
--------------------------------------------------
Astral Avenue -- IN SOME AREAS MAY BE UNLAWFUL OR
REQUIRE A PERMIT -- CHECK WITH LOCAL AUTHORITIES
--------------------------------------------------
THE LANGUAGE OF (let's spend) THE NIGHT (together)
What is the purpose of the artistic technique known as "allusion," and can
it be made to have any relevance in the post-modern era?
With a little luck, I hope to be able to answer these two questions
before we're done here.
But first, one necessary definition.
"Allusion" I take to mean any reference -- embodied in a work of art
-- pertaining to another work of art distinct from the first.
This definition seems to stigmatize allusion as a hermetic
technique. Should not every work of art be a self-defined representation of
some 'real' or 'imaginary' world? The anchors of art must be things other
than art itself, once could argue. What good does it do for one work of art
to refer to another? It smacks of incest and idle games, the pastime of
pedants or bookworms, who have no other referents than words.
In addition, the Puritan work-ethic makes allusion seem like theft.
A writer "borrows" or "steals" another's words and incorporates them into his
own text, thus getting something for nothing.
I maintain that these criticisms of allusion are baseless. Allusion
serves a worthwhile purpose in art. Sure, like any technique, it can be
overdone. But handled correctly, it is an invaluable tool.
The confusion stems from a misperception of the role of art in
society.
Just as man is part of nature, so is art a part of society and
culture. The man/nature dichotomy and the art/life dichotomy are both false.
There has never been a society without art. As Steely Dan sez of
prehistoric cave paintings, "They put it on the wall/ Before there was even
any Hollywood." (Trivia quiz: What recent SF novel opens with an allusion to
this song? Answer: PALIMPSESTS.)
To refer to a previous work of art in a new one is, then, no more
'decadent' or 'effete' than it is to refer to, say, a car or a house, two
other manmade objects.
Let us examine the positive potential of allusion. Allusion
attempts to secure for the new work a vital link to the past. Allusion
embeds a work in the vast matrix of art that already exists. Allusion adds
resonance. Allusion acts as a kind of shorthand, where one phrase can
conjure up a whole book, whose remembered meanings interact with those of the
current text.
SF is a genre where allusion in one way flourishes and in another is
hardly used at all. The sharing of common invented terms and concepts among
different authors is a kind of primitive but useful allusion, which gives SF
much of its strength. But in the sense of aligning itself with the vast
corpus of world literature, SF hardly uses allusion, and is the poorer for
it.
But what, in the standardless era, does one meaningfully allude to?
Prior to this century, writers assumed that their readers were of an
elite stratum and had common knowledge of officially sanctioned classic
texts. Allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, and Greek and Roman authors could
be made with assurance. But Horace and Seneca do not have high recognition
factors nowadays.
This is not to totally foreclose the option of alluding to more
modern texts. Roger Zelazny can title a story "...And Call Me Conrad" and
confidently expect most people to hear an echo of Melville, if only the
Classic Comics version.
However, one must allude to that which can be recognized. What can
replace the old standards, though?
My proposal is pop music. Specifically, rock 'n' roll. I contend
that today, thirty-plus years after the birth of rock, the music forms a
coherent, recognizable, rich and multiplex canon to which fruitful allusion
can be made.
Without further theorizing, here are three examples.
(1) "His calves aching, using branches and boulders to pull himself
up the last few nearly vertical yards of the trail, he finally hauled his
weary body onto the ledge that represented the highest peak in the whole
range. The view was awesome, the corrugated earth spreading away to the
horizon. Dawn broke. "Every mountain and hill shall be made
low...."
(2) "His calves aching, using branches and boulders to pull himself
up the last few nearly vertical yards of the trail, he finally hauled his
weary body onto the ledge that represented the highest peak in the whole
range. The view was awesome, the corrugated earth spreading away to the
horizon. Dawn broke. "Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
stands tiptoe on the misty mountaintops..."
(3) "His calves aching, using branches and boulders to pull himself
up the last few nearly vertical yards of the trail, he finally hauled his
weary body onto the ledge that represented the highest peak in the whole
range. The view was awesome, the corrugated earth spreading away to the
horizon. Dawn broke. "Ain't no mountain high enough, baby, cuz I
chop them down with the side of my hand!"
See how easily the third allusion fits in the natural niche occupied
by a Biblical phrase or a couplet of Shakespeare's.
Alluding to rock lyrics imparts a modern tone, something SF sorely
lacks. Admittedly, one cannot believably have intergalactic adventurers of
the year 10,000 A.D. quoting Dylan. However, many overly pompous and
tight-ass stories would benefit by the injection of a little rock anarchism.
Alluding to rock actually precludes certain unhealthy modes of writing.
I cannot imagine anyone succeeding in writing a novel of Star Wars
techno-fascism bolstered with rock lyrics.
"General Lardpants smashed his fist on the desk and began to shout
at his aide. 'Goddamn it! do you mean to tell me that the lily-livered 120th
Congress has again failed to vote for our orbiting PX's, without which our
boys on space-station duty cannot buy their smokes! Hey, you, get offa my
cloud! You can't always get what you want, but I'm damned well gonna get
what I need! It's gonna be nineteenth nervous breakdown for someone, by
Jove!'"
Utterly impossible, except as farce.
Please note that allusion is more than simply mentioning a song by
title or artist. This technique is a copout, the Ann Beattie School of Cheap
Touchstones. One must do more than merely write:
"They walked down the street; a Stones song issued from a passing
car."
No, actual lyrics must be incorporated -- almost as found objects --
directly into the flow of the narrative. This involves more work but the
payback is higher in terms of frisson.
Try this technique. It might open up new horizons. It did for me.
Walls might just come tumblin' down, as you build a solid bond in the
reader's heart.
PEOPLE YOU NEVER SEE TOGETHER BECAUSE THEY'RE ONE AND THE SAME
Ray Bradbury .................... Andre Previn
N'EST-CE PAS UNE LETTRE
Dear Publisher of ASTRAL AVENUE:
I'm so glad to see that this issue doesn't have any letters column.
I think it's a shame the way your readers treat you. Half of them don't even
bother to respond, while the other half send in the most bizarre and
outrageous theories, crotchets, whimsicalities, vituperations and
fulminations. Can't they see that ASTRAL AVENUE is intended to be something
akin to Mr. William Buckley's wonderful magazine, a sober and rational forum
for logical discourse and gentlemanly debate? I offer a hearty and sincere
"Huzzah" in response to your courage in excluding correspondence from your
smudgy Xeroxed pages.
(signed) A. Loyal Sycophant
-- Dear Mr. S.: Next issue might possibly be all
letters.
ASTRAL AVENUE No. 5. Paul Di Filippo 2 Poplar Street Providence RI 02906
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From Rhode Island: The state to which all other Rhode-Island-sized things
are compared -- it's
*************
ASTRAL AVENUE
*************
No. 6 Apr. '87.
SF person whose maiden name most closely resembles *AA*: Astrid Anderson.
Official Record of *AA*: Van Morrison's ASTRAL WEEKS.
Official Painting: Dali's PARANOIAC ASTRAL IMAGE.
--------------------------------------------
You might not notice one way this magazine is
"exclusive." We have no rich advertisers to pay
printing and mailing costs. Even so we send
*AA*
to many wonderful people who can't pay for it in
dollars. They appreciate it because it shows them
a way out of oppression, poverty, giving them
priceless inspiration and hope.
------------------------------------------------
PUBLISHER'S NOTE. (PUBLISHER'S NOTE is donated this issue by us for a Public
Service Announcement and Quiz.)
Racism is on the rise in this country. We all know of recent events
in Howard Beach, for example. Take the following test (composed by a panel
of scientific experts) to see if you harbor any unsuspected racism.
WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE SEX
WITH?
ASSUMING YOU ARE WHITE:
A) Ronald Reagan/Nancy Reagan
B) Billy Dee Williams/Vanessa Williams
ASSUMING YOU ARE BLACK
A) Redd Foxx/Ella Fitzgerald
B) Richard Gere/Kim Basinger
IF you answered (A) in Section One, please move to Forsyth County
immediately. The same choice in Section Two qualifies you for membership in
Louis Farrakhan's church.
SPECIAL ALL-LETTERS ISSUE
ROB MILLER: In my former lives I wasn't born yet, so this time around I'm
having trouble forming informed opinions.
-- We feel you'll fit right in here, Rob.
DON D'AMASSA: While I think you are too hard on Stephen King, some of your
points are valid. Particularly in IT, there is a repetitiveness of phrase
and idiom that blurs the distinction among characters... Del Rey never
impressed me as a reviewer. He seemed to have this vision of what SF should
be and books were dismissed for not conforming rather than for any inherent
flaws.
-- Don has read more books than Del Rey has published - and we're talking
total units!
ALLEN VARNEY: By and large I agree with Di Filippo's trashing of Stephen
King's work. But the reply to Platt's letter in issue #2 is offensive and
patronizing (to King).
-- To paraphrase Brian Aldiss speaking of Asimov: "What can I say to
(dis)honor the man that he hasn't already said himself?" ('My works are the
literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.' King, NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW)
But let a better critic than I reply to the charge of Excessive Vitriol:
"It's true. Critics tend to be an irritable lot... Why do we do
it? First there is the reactive pain. Only those who have reviewed, year in
and year out, know how truly abominable most fiction is. And we can't remove
ourselves from the pain. Ordinary readers can skip, or read every third
word, or quit in the middle. We can't. We must read carefully, with our
sensitivities at full operation and our critical-historical apparatus always
in high gear.... The mental sensation is that of eating garbage, I assure
you, and if critics' accumulated suffering did not find an outlet in the
vigor of our language, I don't know what we would do. And it's the critics
who care the most who suffer the most; irritation is a sign of betrayed
love.... But there are other reasons.... critics welcome any way of
expressing judgements that will be both PRECISE and COMPACT. If VIVID be
added thereunto, fine -- what else is good style?... Wit is a form of
condensation..." (Joanna Russ, F&SF 11/79)
TOM SWIFT: Di Filippo's magazine. General impression is that he's the Andy
Rooney of SF criticism....
--- That's MICKEY Rooney, you pop-icon-slinging turkey! You know, as in:
"Hey, kids, my Dad's got a Xerox machine, let's put out a zine!" But
seriously, folks, we regret that our ideas are not dangerous enough to
necessitate a pseudonym like Mr. (Ms.?) Swift's. One nice thing about a
pen-name: your big public chest-thumping is divorced from your mingy private
actions, so no one can tell if YOU WALK IT LIKE YOU TALK IT!
PETER LAMBORN WILSON: OK, you're probably right re: pop music. But I'm
pretty sure NOTHING'S gonna save serious literature... & ultimately, who
cares? I'm enjoying *AA*. You'd save money by xeroxing on both sides.
ASTRID ANDERSON: ASTRAL AVE is great fun -- have you considered double-sided
xerox to save some bucks? Just watch your spacing for the corner staple.
You're wrong about Bob Silverberg -- he's actually Lou Aronica.
-- Actually, guys and gals, most people tell us that the blank side of each
page is the best part! In truth, tho, Kinko's Copies charges per exposure,
not per sheet of paper, so double-sided copying costs the same. I suppose I
would save in postage -- i.e., I could mail ten pages of text instead of five
for 22 cents. But do I -- does anyone? -- really have ten pages worth of
opinion every month? Simplify, simplify!
As for the corner staple: ever since the PLAYBOY centerfold lost her
staples, a vital element of mystery has fled our sad culture. The flesh
concealed beneath Miss June's staples was always the most erogenous part,
being the only hidden portion of her anatomy. Therefore, we follow the
practice of always obscuring something under our own corner staple, hoping to
restore some mystique to this show-it-all society.
RUDY RUCKER: The writers out here that I see... are getting into the idea of
a new movement called Freestyle. The basic idea is to write like yourself
but more so.
-- No one could write more like himself than Mister Rudolfo von B. Rucker.
MICHAEL ADKISSON: The attitude displayed by the said individual from the
April 1977 ANALOG regarding UNEARTH and new writers is still very much with
us today. People don't want the new and untried -- they want the same old
crap, over and over.
-- For the other side of this issue, read on.
TERRY CARR: For one thing, the quotation from Lester del Rey was simply a
restatement of something that's been said often and often in fan circles for
forty years or more, to the effect that fanzines (or semiprozines like
UNEARTH) shouldn't publish SF stories by amateurs because there have always
been enough professional markets for good SF stories and even bad SF stories.
(Pause a moment and think of how many stories you've read in the
professional SF magazines that were just plain lousy. If all the
professional editors rejected a story -- even today there are still enough
editors to ensure that despite the personal preferences of each, any good
story will find a buyer -- then that story must be pretty bad indeed.)
Thus, as Lester recapitulated the argument, the stories that get
submitted to fanzines or semiprozines whose rates are negligible, usually
about 1/4 cent a word, are those that fall below the measure of quality that
even a pro editor faced with a deadline two days hence would have to observe.
So I think it's clear that the stories published in UNEARTH or any
other not-fully-professional magazine have almost always been the dregs left
over from the professional magazines and books. I have to say that I'm not
particularly impressed by your list of authors whose first stories were
published in UNEARTH, because though all the writers you named have gone on
to establish good and sometimes spectacular reputations with their
professionally published stories, that doesn't guarantee that their first
mini-sales were worth a damn or deserved to be published.
I think the truth is that those early stories just weren't worth
professional publication because the writers hadn't developed their talents
enough yet for the big league.
I could name you dozens of authors who are now in the Big Name
bracket whose first stories appeared in fanzines: Clarke, Bradbury,
Silverberg, Benford, Zelazny, Brunner, Ellison, and a whole lot more. For
that matter, my own early stories, written when I was thirteen or fourteen
years old, appeared in fanzines. I assure you that they were all pretty
terrible.
But since even this mini-list includes writers better than those
whose early stories appeared in UNEARTH, and since those early publications
by writers who are now famous were so bad, you can see why I'm not impressed
by your list of authors in UNEARTH. I think the truth is that professional
editors, considered as a group rather than individually (we all have our
blind spots), will always buy any sf or fantasy story that's even reasonably
good; therefore the stories that appear in less-than-professional markets are
seldom if ever worth reading.
Your claim that 'the field needs more markets, of whatever sort'
thus strikes me as pretty silly. If you seriously consider the history of SF
magazines and such, you won't be able to help noticing that when we had
twenty or thirty SF magazines, as we did in the early 40s and early 50s, most
of the stories that got published in them just plain stank. So do we really
need more SF markets now? Well, I think it might be good if we had one or
two more, just to add to the variety of published SF and fantasy; but if the
short SF market were ever again to expand into the twenties or even the
teens, I'm sure there'd be so many odoriferous stories published that they'd
cause readers to stop buying all SF magazines, and then where would we be?
TERRY CARR.
-- A few cavils (I'm sure readers will be supplying more):
(1). The alternative to working out one's beginning-writer faults in the
short story market is working out one's faults in the novel market, something
we see quite frequently nowadays, as fledgling writers, untempered by
previous sales, produce hand-handed first efforts. It seems to me that a bad
novel would turn off more people to SF than a bad story, leaving a
longer-lasting and bigger foul taste.
(2). Many critics (Aldiss, Malzberg) fell the Fifties were the real golden
age of SF, and can cite works to prove it. Perhaps the "glut" of mags was
partly responsible.
(3). Again, in the Fifties, someone like Dick could at least make a
(horsemeat-level) living off the mags, which is impossible now. What if one
wants to be a full-time writer without producing novels, temporarily or
permanently? More mags would allow this.
(4). Magazines are the cutting edge, short experiments being more likely to
get published than long ones. The fewer the mags, the duller the edge. I
still say: Let a hundred flowers bloom, and let history sort 'em
out!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASTRAL AVENUE No. 6 Paul Di Filippo 2 Poplar Street Providence RI 02906
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If you weren't reading this, chances are you'd be reading something else.
************** ASTRAL AVENUE ************** May 1987 No. 7
THE PUBLISHER'S DESK a personal chat with our readers by mr munsey
"If I couldn't write worth a damn, I think I'd like to own a hardware store.
I've long been fascinated by the enormous varieties of tools used to maintain
our society, as well as the clips, hinges, pins, brads, screws, pulleys,
wires, chains, clamps and pipes that hold it together. Not to mention the
putty, plaster, cement and paint that keep it looking well in places. Even
more than a book store, where I probably wouldn't get to read much anyway, I
believe that I could have been fairly happy in a good general hardware shop."
This humble and honest paragraph is from the introduction to Roger
Zelazny's THE LAST DEFENDER OF CAMELOT. We solicit contributions from
readers in the same vein. What would you do if you weren't involved in SF?
What is your dream occupation, the one where no niggling questions of
esthetics and royalties intrude? Look deep inside, and confess to a longing
to perform some honest work of benefit to society, instead of being the
artistic parasite you are today. Please resist the temptation to nominate
yourself for the job of photographing Pet-of-the-Month, or purchasing shoes
for Imelda Marcos. We're looking for salt-of-the-earth type jobs, or at least
the plausible.
To get everyone in the spirit, we will confess that our secret alternate
life is.... to be the owner of a record store. Spinning discs over the shop
system, turning people on to good new music, playing host to interesting
folks from the local music scene. No rejections, or struggles to produce
fiction of sempiternal worth.... Hold on a minute, if we go on in this vein,
we might not even finish this issue of AA!
***FRIDAY EVENING PROGRAMS up to and including all the latest post-modern
statements... Prescribed and approved by all the medical authorities, for
CONSTIPATION, DYSPEPSIA, TORPIDITY OF THE LIVER, HEMORRHOIDS, as well as all
kindred ailments resulting from indiscretion in diet
ANNOUNCER: And now, your host of Love Connection, Chuck Woolery!
AUDIENCE: (Applause, hoots, catcalls, whistles)
CW: Thank you, thank you, people. Let's get down to the business of making
a Love Connection. Our first guest tonight is Joe Schmertz. (Enter Joe
Schmertz, crosses stage and sits next to CW)
CW: Nice to have you on the show, Joe. Why don't you tell us a little about
yourself?
JS: Well, I'm an editor for a science fiction magazine, and I'm looking for
a writer who can meet the demands of my readers for hard, technical SF.
CW: Sounds reasonable, Joe. Let's take a look at the writers you had to
choose from. First, there was Cathy.
CATHY (on videotape): Well, I've just sold my first novel, entitled THE
UNICORN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE....
CW: Next was Bill.
BILL (on videotape): My latest novel, TREMENDOUS CATACLYSM THAT NEARLY WIPES
OUT HUMANITY, has just gone back for a third printing before its publication
date...
CW: And finally, there was Helen.
HELEN (on videotape): I've only sold three stories so far, but one's been
anthologized in every best-of-the-year collection whose editor I've
personally met.
CW: Well, audience, you've seen who Joe had to pick from. Lock in your
votes, and when we return, we'll see who he actually chose for his "Literary
Love Connection."
<Break for commercial for Franklin Mint SF Classics>
CW: We're back. All right, Joe, tell us who you picked.
JS: Needless to say, I chose Bill.
AUDIENCE: Yaaaaayyy!
CW: Let's bring Bill in on this, as we hear about his submission. (Window
opens up, featuring Bill, live.)
CW: Hi, Bill. Make yourself comfortable, and jump in if there's anything
you want to "contribute," ha-ha.
BILL: Sure.
JS: Well, I was very eager to meet Bill. I had read his novel, and it was
just the kind of thing I was looking for. I was a little disappointed when he
actually showed up at my office.
CW: Why is that, Joe?
JS: Well, he was two hours late for our appointment, and drunk to boot. His
publisher had been feeding him booze at Elaine's while I sweated in my
windowless office. On top of that, I had been expecting Bill to look and act
like one of Heinlein's "competent men," so we could tout him to our readers
in our monthly biographical feature. Instead, he was timid and built like a
schmoo. Now I know why he never lets any publicity pictures appear on his
books.
AUDIENCE: Whoooooaaaa!
BILL: Chuck, I don't think that's a fair comment. A writer's appearance has
nothing to do with his or her work.
CW: Boy, is that a naive comment! Haven't you seen John Irving in wrestling
duds lately?
JS: Anyway, I was prepared to overlook all that. But the manuscript Bill
brought me was just the final straw. It was dog-eared and coffee-stained,
and must have been in a drawer since before Bill was first published. These
novelists all think they're too good to write short stories. Let me tell
them all now, it's not easy to cram ten pages of technical exposition into a
twenty-page novella. In any case, Bill's story was a total loser. I had to
bounce it right then and there. It was downright embarrassing for both of
us.
BILL: I've been busy on a publicity tour lately....
CW: No excuses, Bill. So, Joe, I take it we didn't make a "Literary Love
Connection?"
JS: No, I'm afraid not.
CW: Let's see who the audience picked for you.... Why, it was Helen, at 60
percent! Well, Joe, if you want to see a story from Helen, we'll pay for a
donut and endless cup of coffee for the both of you, at the local coffee-shop
near your office.
JS: What have I got to lose? She may not have a Ph.D. in physics, but she's
young and malleable --
CW: Great. And Bill, you can console yourself with your top spot on the
best-seller lists. Well, I'm afraid we're out of time for tonight, folks.
Tune in tomorrow, when we try to make and agent-author "Literary Love
Connection!"
AUDIENCE: (Applause, hoots, catcalls, whistles.)
**********
ANOTHER REASON NOT TO ATTEND THE NEBULAS
"March 8, 1914: After ingesting a toothpick along with an hors d'oeuvre
at a cocktail party, Sherwood Anderson, 64, died in Colon, Panama, of the
complications of peritonitis." -- A LITERARY BOOK OF DAYS.
THIS MONTH'S MAXIM: You can't spell "literary" without "lite."
HOT TIP!!!! Every reader of discernment should rush out and lay hands on a
copy of LOVING LITTLE EGYPT, by Thomas McMahon. Of particular interest is
how the author -- intentionally or inadvertently -- creates an analogue to
cyberspace and its cowboys in the phone network of the early twentieth
century.
THE PLAYBOY STAPLE
by Donn Webb
JHVH was angered by man. He removed the curse of Babel so everybody
knew exactly was everybody else was saying. World War III began fifteen
minutes later.
******
ACCESS TO TOOLS by Rudy Rucker
Why write a column in a... uh... Mr. Wizard vein? NET BLOWAGE. That's
the word I woke up with in my head yesterday or was it Belgium. Once my
college friend, and later Viet Vet, Don Marritz, wrote me a letter that
starts... uh.... "Dear Rudy and Sylvia, Of all possible ways to start a
letter, THIS is probably the worst..."
When I was at Seacon in Brighton, etc., some guys -- I mean real Brit
punks -- are yelling at me, sitting on the hotel porch and... now right in
this period I was reading A SCANNER DARKLY... uh, yesterday my dog winked at
me // my piles just dies // trucked in from Toledo // gosh you're a lovely
audience.
Broadway Danny Rose. What a great movie. Woody, he gives... uh...
short weight, you dig, B&W and you get out 20 mins. earlier than the kids who
are... uh... seeing FOOTLOOSE.
Recently I did some library research -- and that's really what I'd like
this column to be, viz., a sharing of the facts that I glean in my diffuse,
but wide-ranging investigations. What's in it for me? Hopefully (and I do
mean "hopefully," which is as much an authentic U.S. word as... uh... NET
BLOWAGE), hopefully this totally lame sentence will end. Yes!
Yeah... uh... I found this book in the library, the Lynchburg (called
L'burg for short)... uh... library and I looked up Ike's memoirs. AT EASE:
STORIES I TELL TO MY FRIENDS. Yeah. I had this rap... a running joke, like,
that I'd been telling my stories to... uh... friends. OK, now the idea was
that I'm writing the story of my life -- I was working on it, a novel that
I'm now working on (SHOP TALK! YES!) it's called THE SECRET OF LIFE. It's
basically a UFO novel. I feel, by the way, that it's high time for a lot of
UFO novels. The virtue of this form is that one has as many aliens as one
needs (rival races of saucer-aliens fight it out on Earth) without having to
HAUL ALL THAT SHIT THROUGH ALL THEM LIGHT-YEARS.
"Where's the UFOlogy section?" was the question that one of those fabled
Brit punks axed me back a page or piece (hyuck-hyuck)/cut/RESET yeah really
I mean someone did once say the word UFOlogy to me and I understood him, so
instead of killing me, he went in and got evicted by the dicks. Hotel.
OK, now Ike's memoirs. I was telling my friend Greg Gibson (who runs a
wonderful book-store called The Ten Pound Island Book Shop in Gloucester,
Mass., tell "Gib" you know me and he's liable to treat you to a real "Down
East" hoedown. Or is it clambake? Actually, he might kill you. No, really,
it's a nice shop.) Greg and I roomed together in college, and we were great
admirers of Jack and the Beats. I'd always wanted to write a book like ON
THE ROAD. And the way Jack actually did it was to get a teletype roll
(photographs exist!) and.. uh... put it in his typewriter and go on and on
and not have to be subject to the tyranny of the PAGE. (Of course, now a
scrolling word-processor is just such a piece of "paper." It seems likely to
change the texture of commercial prose. Or lead to a great artistic advance.
Whatever.)
Right. Now I want to finish this story. The one thing, I mean, I think
the FAIR thing to the readers of this column is that whenever I begin a story
I will eventually finish it within the body of the piece -- modulo, of
course, considerations of artistic polish and natural reticence. AT EASE:
STORIES I TELL TO MY FRIENDS, by Dwight David Eisenhower. We're talking
actual fucking library research here. I get the book, and it's wonderfully
greasy. The cover crinkling in the light and all covered with SEBUM (which
is the scientific name for the skin grease that humans ooze, q.v. T. Pynchon,
"...covering everything with an offensive coat of sebum.") sebum... yeah.
Ike. In... uh.... DESOLATION ANGELS, I guess, Jack is down in Mexico City
and living downstairs from some guy called "Old Ike the Pusher." In college,
Greg was a big jogger. He ran before any of the others. He had a rap: how,
when he was running and it hurt first so his lungs were falling out, then the
legs and the liver, the thing to cheer himself up was to think of "Old Ike
the Pusher."
I like Ike, but does Ike like me?
RIGHT! OK. Now what I was telling Greg when I was working up my psych
to write another book, was this idea that Ike's AT EASE should be a cult
classic, a book that any "true communicant" must have at least a nodding
acquaintance with... a book of the stature of Jean-Paul Sartre's NAUSEA,
perhaps (which I'll get back to next issue). OK, now it's a FUNNY idea that
AT EASE should be a good book. I mean it's an interesting idea, and one
wants it to be true. For years I laughed about the title. I remember once
saying, blown away at Don Marritz's wedding in Gettysburg, "AT EASE: STORIES
I TELL TO MY FRIENDS, what an incredibly feeble title, I mean, it's like a
LIMP DICK, at ease, yet...."
But yet. So the running joke I had with Greg was that... uh... my rap
about my book when I'm trying to up the... uh... net blowage or some shit...
uh... "If I have only begun to approach the transcendant clarity of 'Ike' in
his immortal..." Yeah. Right. So I'm at the Lynchburg Public Sebum and I
do find Ike's book. This is like one day I'm too burnt-out to write... but
I've still got my JOB to do, a type of behavior to exhibit -- as opposed to
watching..uh.. basketball games. And I'm thinking, "Well, maybe today I'm
not going to write much, but hell, it's only Monday or Tuesday. I like Ike!"
And plan to gut it for good quotes, right.
And go in there... past the... uh... sebum, and, uh...
..uh...
Well, there's not much of what you might call fine writing. I did find
two or three interesting things. He calls the intro by the line, "A Man
Talking To Himself." And is here, a voice in yer ear, via DICTAPHONE. Poor
guy couldn't type, I guess...
Anyway, he had a big dick. That's the one heretofore subtextual
transrealist fact that I ferreted out. I mean... MAYBE. Larry Flynt has
been an example to us all. I used to have a rap that Larry Flynt was the
Martin Luther King of the Seventies. I'm glad the Seventies are over.
Disco, Jerry F., it all fades. "Only real people survive," Henry was telling
me the other night. Henry and his wife Diana own 2 ladies' clothing stores.
Henry and I got into this rap about "net blowage." It's a phrase that came
to me a few days ago, out of nowhere, you know, the Muse sits on your face.
Ups the net blowage. They're about to start a City Council election here and
we were grooving off making 'the net amount of on-line blowage' a like major
issue.
The wrap-up. UFOlogy. It's heavy and worth thinking about. I don't
know if I would have ever fully gotten into SF if I hadn't read Ian Watson's
MIRACLE VISITORS. Which, in turn, draws a lot of energy from C.G. Jung's
FLYING SAUCERS, subtitle: "A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies."
Oh yeah, and why Ike had a big dick. Well, he was a real scapegrace at
West Point, always in trouble. Sometimes he even reported himself if nobody
else would bother. Genial. So the officer says, "Come down to my room in
dress-coats for punishment-duty-tour." It was Ike and his roommate, supposed
to report. And the PRANK is that they only wear the special dress-coats and
not the (expected) rest of the uniform, no not anything else, "not another
stitch." So all I'm saying is, if Ike had the (dick and) balls to do the
prank he must have been pretty well-adjusted or had a humongo dong.... one!
Well that's it. Next ish: NAUSEA by Jean-Paul Sartre, and THE BOOK OF
THE SUBGENIUS.
********
CURRENT NEWS AND VIEWS
Science Isn't Supposed To Be Entertaining
From BORIS ZAVGORODNY: I received your two envelopes with your zine, ASTRAL
AVENUE. Thank you very much!
From ROB MILLER: I suspect editors of prozines publish bad stories because
a) they think they are good; b) take big and/or known names to increase
sales; c) are similar to other popular stories, themes and authors; d) are
trendy.
I think Carr's statement is as bad as his collections of stories are
good.
From DON WEBB: Allusion to R-n-R is a tricky business. According to Gardner
Dozois, publishers of rock lyrics are the most likely to sue.
I would rather watch Red Foxx have sex with Nancy Reagan.
From LEWIS SHINER: Terry Carr's letter in AA#6 was not only fatuous,
self-serving crap, it also managed to contradict itself. His statement that
"professional editors... will always buy any sf or fantasy story that's even
reasonably good" is pure bullshit. I have read many good stories that were
rejected by every editor in the field. Why? Because the author was not yet a
Recognized Name. If any editor tells me they read a story out of the slush
pile the same way they read a story from a Big Name Pro, I would have to
politely suggest that they are lying through their teeth.
Furthermore, Terry does not seem to have read any of the UNEARTH stories
which he proceeds, nonetheless, to condemn as unfit for publication. I
myself have read at least two of them, "Fragments of a Hologram Rose" by
William Gibson and "The Red Planet" by James Blaylock, that I would rate
somewhere between first-rate and brilliant. By any standards.
Terry may feel that Clarke, Benford, and Brunner, for example, are
"better" writers than Gibson and Blaylock and Rucker -- but I don't.
Finally, after tellins us that every decent story written in SF is
immediately snapped up by himself or one of his fellow all-knowing,
all-seeing editors, he says maybe we should have "one or two more (markets),
just to add to the variety of published SF and fantasy." But Terry -- you've
already told us that they would only be adding worthless crap!
I'm in a position now where I can sell pretty much everything I write.
But I remember all too well what it was like when I couldn't. It's bad
enough that writers who are just starting out are so subject to the whims of
a few editors. What really chaps my ass is when somebody like Terry Carr
thinks his personal taste is more than just that -- that he has some cosmic
handle on the good and bad, and can consign a writer's work (in some cases,
work he hasn't even read) into obscurity with a casual sneer.
Signed, Hot under the collar....
From BRIAN ALDISS: You were talking about Lester del Rey and his prickish
judgements on SF. It's old history now, but some years back he tried his
hand at a history of SF, in the Garland series. It was so fatuous that even
his sycophants let it vanish without a trace. (Like he got the date of
publication of FRANKENSTEIN wrong, having cribbed it from James Gunn's
history where, by a freak of chance, it was also misprinted.)
His book is an attempt to promote his own role in pulp SF to something
like importance -- a concept, as Moskowitz once put it in a lapidary phrase,
the mind cannot stomach. Here as a sample for toilet-side reading is just one
paragraph from del Rey's history. Try and stay awake. It's from a chapter
called "The Age of Wonder"; it certainly made me wonder what del Rey's life
can have been about:
"In September 1932, SCIENCE FICTION DIGEST appeared, with Maurice Z.
Ingher as editor. Weisinger and Schwartz were now joined by Raymond A.
Palmer as associate or managing editors. This publication had a set of
departments somewhat similar to those of THE TIME TRAVELLER. But one of the
more interesting bits was a column speculating on just who Anthony Gilmore
might be..."
Personally, I'm still wondering.
From MICHAEL SWANWICK: I read with interest your article in AA#5 on the use
of allusion. You should be aware, however, that many editors will reject any
story that includes a direct quote of rock song lyrics. This is because the
corporate entities responsible for collecting song royalties are notoriously
litiginous, and most science fiction publishers are afraid of lawsuits.
<AA> -- Two people raising this point requires me to answer. I don't see
Ace being sued for the aforementioned Steely Dan reference in PALIMPSESTS,
and I refuse to believe that there is some corporate hireling sitting in an
office somewhere, who has all the lyrics of all his company's artists
memorized and is reading every piece of fiction published, his vibrissae
quivering for quotes, especially not if they are embedded as found objects
right in the text, without citation.
From JANET FOX: I've heard (Carr) saying the same thing, long and loud,
before.... Money does not confer literary perspicacity.
From DAVID D'AMMASSA: Many white Democrats would love the opportunity to
have sex with Ronald Reagan. Who could pass up the invitation to do to the
President what he's been doing to the country for years?
From LUKE McGUFF: Terry's argument as he states it is circular and
irrefutable. Good stories get published in pro magazines, bad stories don't.
QED. But to invalidate this argument, all you have to do is point to a good
story in a semipro market, or a bad story in a pro market. As he states it,
it's impossible to have a bad story in a pro market, and impossible to have a
good story in a semipro market.
The SF market is shifting from adventurousness to wish-fulfillment. If
you look at the Christmas catalog for B. Dalton's, the only SF books they
list come in boxed sets, as serials or novels by Heinlein....
From MISHA CHOCHOLAK: I thought your allusion article was good. It's real
dull for a writer to use a nice literary allusion and have everybody miss
it....
As far as Terry Carr is concerned, well the quality short story stuff is
pure bunko. Very few main house publishers look for quality any more, they
just publish for bucks.
From BRETT RUTHERFORD: I, for one, as both reader and writer, would like to
cast a vote against the incorporation of rock and popular song lyrics in
fiction. This may seem to establish an easy, "fuzzy" feeling of camaraderie
between writer and some readers, but in the long run, this is a lazy and
hazardous way to enrich one's writing.
First of all, there is the pop-culture bias shown by the author who
blithely assumes that all his readers -- or the only ones who matter -- know
exactly what he's talking about when he quotes or alludes to his favorite
music. And, since all of us dream and hope that we'll be read twenty or
fifty years from now, we're also making the assumptions about the future....
It is easy to assume that the stuff that fills the airwaves and crams
the shelves of the record stores represents the zeitgeist of contemporary
culture. Such assumptions can be disastrously wrong.... Mackay, in his
EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS, has an
illuminating chapter about how songs and phrases come and go. They are foam
on the waves of culture. How many popular tunes of the 1880's can you hum or
quote words from?....
Writers must also recognize that there are millions of readers out there
of all ages -- even members of the Sixties and Seventies generations -- who
loathe popular music, never listen to it, and find quotations of its badly
crafted lyrics to be annoying, cryptic, and meaningless....
Finally, rock and song lyrics, by their very nature and because of the
limited IQs of most performers, are generally inept as poems and regressive
if not Neanderthal in content... Quoting rock lyrics in fiction is like
putting vinyl siding on the Taj Mahal.
******** AND THEY SAY SCIENTISTS HAVE NO SENSE OF HUMOR
A counter-theory to the recent speculations about a Fifth Force is
called the "Chu-Dicke hypothesis."
********** LIFE IMITATES PROPAGANDA
Phillip Knightley, in his book THE SECOND OLDEST PROFESSION, maintains
that the first modern intelligence service, the British SIS (and consequently
all subsequent ones) was founded in 1909 in direct response to a William
LeQueux novel! Anyone care to take long-term bets now over what hare-brained
SF novel of the Eighties will have similar long-reaching effects?
*********
!!! PROPOSAL FOR AN ASTRAL CONVENTION !!!
The Association for Ontological Anarchy, along with the West-Coast Magus
Ipsissima, YAEL DRAGWYLA, has decided to host a big Convention of all
interested Mutants, Zine-oids, SubG's, Type 3's & Chaos Magicians. The
kicker is: the meeting will be held on the ASTRAL PLANE.
We will choose some very famous natural landmark, & invite everyone to
project their AETHERIAL DOUBLES thence simultaneously at some appropriate
moment. Say for example Niagara Falls at noon on the Summer Solstice 1987:
take a photo or postcard of the Falls, concentrate on it, imagine yourself
transported there in a flash. Create an archetypal visionary appearance for
yourself; perform some magical or artistic act or make a speech; then
concentrate on the OTHER people present in their astral bodies.
Stay as long as you can (up to, say, an hour). Yael D., as our most
accomplished magician, will remain on-site for the full hour to help
neophytes, pass out spiritual refreshments & emcee the Convention
proceedings. Early in the hour we'll present our set-pieces; towards the
end, things will degenerate toward pure partying. (Bring astral
intoxicants.)
Then, by one PM at the latest, return to your bodies (by the way, be
sure you can leave them safely, apparently asleep & undisturbed, for the full
period). At once, upon yr return, write (or record graphically) an account
of your experiences. Send them to Yael or me. We will prepare a PROCEEDINGS
(or "Akashic Record") of the Convention, which will be published & sent to
all participants.
Before we announce a definite time & place, we'd like to hear from AT
LEAST a dozen or so friends who WILL attend. Please offer suggestions about
ideal location and time. An important point: how do we synchronize our
appearances so as to arrive (possibly from all over the world) within the
appointed hour? Sample invocations & techniques for easy astral travel would
be welcome. When all details have been ironed out, we will publish an Open
Invitation, maybe in POPULAR REALITY &/or elsewhere; & also send out specific
invitations. We'll provide, if possible, photos & maps needed for
vizualization of the Convention site.
We MAY be able to erect, on the site, some sort of astral beacon,
perhaps even an aedefice of appropriate appearance... in the form of a shabby
vacation hotel which hosts firemens' conventions & dreary little Chamber of
Commerce events...? Maybe a Holiday Inn? Or would you prefer a real
Hollywood/Baghdad/Opium-Dream pavilion in the clouds? Suggestions please!
If you definitely want to attend, let us know at A.O.A, Box 586,
Brooklyn NY 11211. Wa salaam.
ASTRAL AVENUE 7 Paul Di Filippo 2 Poplar Street Providence RI
02906
**********
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From Rhode Island: Birthplace of GI Joe
and Providence, Amy Carter's turf
its:
********************
ASTRAL AVENUE
********************
No. 8 June 1987
Fun Filled All American Activities
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Herewith, our nominations for Fun Couples of 1987.
Bruce and Connie WILLIS
Mel and William GIBSON
Tina and George TURNER
Cybil and Lucius SHEPARD
Howard and Scott BAKER
Eugene and Shawna MCCARTHY
Bob and Clive BARKER
Dick and Arthur C. CLARKE
Anita and Edward BRYANT
H.R. and Joe HALDEMAN
Betty and John FORD
Barbara and Glen COOK
DeForest and James Patrick KELLY
Charlie and Charles BROWN
C.J. Cherryh WILDER
IF "If This Goes On" GOES ON
Conventional wisdom dictates that all SF stories can be divided into
three classes: "what if," "why not," and "if this goes on." Let's assume
momentarily that conventional wisdom -- for once -- is right. I'd like to
look at this last category of story, examining its strengths and weaknesses,
and its current stature in the field.
Last item first. I don't believe most people would dispute that the
"If This Goes On" (hereafter, ITGO) type of story is in the ascendant right
now, thanks primarily to the works of William Gibson. The average reader, in
fact, probably conceives of the entire cyberpunk movement as an ITGO
phenomenon (a misreading Bruce Sterling has been at pains to dispute).
Although in terms of total units sold, fantasy epics and novels of half-assed
space empires outnumber the ITGO books, it is these latter works that receive
the lion's share of discussion and critical attention.
There's good reason for this. The ITGO book holds a number of aces
in its hand.
Realism sometims seems a dirty word among SF readers, but it's a
drug they secretly crave. And the ITGO book offers realism up the kazoo.
Done well, as in Gibson's books, the ITGO mode provides the closest sensation
available in SF to reading a contemporary mimetic novel. The reader is
convinced that he's inhabiting his actual future. She believes she's been
vouchsafed a prophetic vision of times to come. Such a powerful frisson is
not to be lightly negated. One reason ITGO books are so
convincing is that their roots are firmly planted in the present. The
Suborbital Express of Extrapolation always takes off from the Runway of the
Present. In an ITGO book, the reader encounters tokens and talismans of his
current life, which serve to anchor the new imaginative elements.
By definition, the ITGO mode must base its projections on current
trends, actual research, logical developments. An author can highlight,
accentuate, or exaggerate certain features of the present, but -- if he plays
by the rules -- he must extrapolate from actual features of the present.
Otherwise -- as when, say, an FTL drive is introduced -- we veer into the
"what if" mode.
Now, it is beyond any but the most niggling of disputes as to what
the current salient features of the present are: computers, biotechnology,
corporations, terrorism, ecodisaster -- stop me if any of this is starting to
sound familiar.
The point I'm trying to make is emerging from the shadows: the ITGO
book is a sexy, reader-entrancing, stimulating exercise. But by necessity it
hews to a very narrow path.
There is only one SF future with any real probability. (However,
this is not to maintain that Gibson or Watkin's world will necessarily come
to pass. As the mathematician Persi Diaconis has said, "Probability is not a
statement so much about what will happen, as about what I know.")
Let me illustrate what I mean.
In one of my notebooks is the scrawl: "Murder by industrial
waterjet."
In COUNT ZERO, Gibson, page 60, is the phrase: "...slice pizza with
a huge industrial waterknife..."
The future is definitely not going to revolve around industrial
hydraulic cutting mechanisms. Yet -- here are two people focusing on them.
Why? Because they are interesting, lively, credible futuristic gadgets that
serve to promote the frisson under discussion. I am willing to bet that
Gibson and I encountered these industrial tools in the same place: the pages
of SCIENCE NEWS of OMNI or SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN or THE NEW YORK TIMES SCIENCE
SECTION or SCIENCE DIGEST or HIGH TECHNOLOGY....
The end result of this reliance on likely developments learned about
from a shared knowledge-base (and let's face it: there are only so many
sources) is that all ITGO fiction starts to sound alike. A consensual
future, stifling of individual perceptions, begins to crystallize around the
writers like amber.
Is there any solution to this problem? Can the desired verisilitude
and relevance be retained, while still creating a unique future?
I believe the answer is yes.
What is needed is a fusion of modes, namely between ITGO and "what
if." As in evolution, this hybrid will possess the strengths of both
parents, and new ones they do not have.
The WI story has not been known for its credibility. Take a book
such as INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. What if pods from outer space landed
and began replacing humans with zombies? Well, the result might be a
suspenseful allegory about the Eisenhower era, but it just don't got the kind
of thrill we're looking for. One might as well say, what if we all turned
into rhinoceroses? It's just not gonna happen, and the reader realizes it.
However, I believe that with a little care in the initial choosing
of the germinal improbability, and, thereafter, by a careful adherence to and
blending of strict ITGO methods, valid, germane works can be written.
In fact it's already been done. What I'm proposing is not new.
The names?
Bester's DEMOLISHED MAN and TIGER, TIGER; Sterling and Shiner's
"Mozart in Mirrorshades"; Bishop's "The Quickening."
Telepathy. Teleportation. Time travel. Random relocation. These
are all blatant impossibilities, according to our current state of knowledge.
Therefore the works cited above cannot be of ITGO narratives. Yet, once
their seminal unlikelihoods are gotten beyond, we find that they possess many
of the attractive features of ITGO, along with the novelty that comes from
"what if." To my mind, this type of story transcends both the straight ITGO
and WI modes, offering the pleasures of both, and unique ones of its own.
Its hallmark is a fusion of improbable novelty and straight-ahead
sociotechnical extrapolation, to produce futures which, despite their
underlying impossibility, are as utterly convincing -- and as wildly
delirious -- as a simstim composed by Dali.
DO COMPOSERS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP?
"I like Philip K. Dick's world." -- Ryuichi Sakamoto, THE FACE,
March 1987.
CAN YOU SAY "YUPPIES," BOYS AND GIRLS? SURE YOU CAN.
My neighborhood currently swarms with rug-rats, crumb-snatchers and
curtain-pullers, all dressed more expensively than Adnan Khashoggi, being
pushed in $200 carriages by adoring Double-Income Moms & Pops. Out of
defense, I've been forced to learn a new word: brapholatry, the worship of
babies. Use it yourself, and antagonize your own resident Yups.
I KNEW THE BRIDE WHEN SHE USETA ROCK 'N' ROLL
(Inaugurating an irregular series of quotes from B.C. (Before
Cyberpunk) which illuminate, foreshadow, or belie our Current Predicament.
Entries solicited.)
"John Shirley grew up mostly in Oregon, where he was hated for being
skinny and peculiar. He worked on or edited a number of underground papers
before realizing that 'all politics is self-centered, self-corrupting,
hypocritical and bigoted.' He writes: 'I have played the various roles of
hippie, bum, student, criminal, egotist, fool, lecturer, euphemism, acidhead
and writer.' He hopes to write surrealist speculative fiction. He is
clearly well qualified by background and talent to do so."
CLARION III, 1973, p. 45.
REPORT FROM THE CONTINENT by Brian Aldiss
My wife and I did a drive through France last summer, calling in on
Verne's amazing tomb at Amiens, and eventually arriving at Geneva, where the
Villa Diodati stands, overlooking the lake, in a quiet suburb. You turn a
bend in the road -- and there it is, walls and heavy wrought-iron gates
making it inaccessible to rubberneckers. Of Byron there are plenty of local
reminders -- the Continentals love a lord. But the shades of the young
Shelleys have left no trace. Nor is there any monument to Frankenstein in
the town he inhabited. With a copy of the novel, we could follow the
monster's footsteps, and arrived eventually on the Mer de Glace, which is an
awesome sight. How well-advised Mary was to set FRANKENSTEIN in Switzerland,
that artificial state, rather than in the streets of London.
WRITERS REVISE THEIR LIVES!
COLIN GREENLAND:
Recently I was coming home quite drunk, quite late one night, and I
had to wait the best part of an hour at Liverpool Street railway station, the
London terminus for my local line. Extensive rebuilding work was in progress
(still is).
There was a man in a big mechanical excavator dipping great grabs
full of chunky masonry out of a hole in the ground, and tipping them one by
one into a relay of small dumper trucks. The truck driver would roll up in
his truck, stop and dismount (some sort of safety regulation, obviously)
while the excavator man -- neatly, almost daintily -- filled his little truck
with the next load of concrete rubble.
The excavator man worked swiftly, with the unthinking precision that
is the soul of grace. Splintered slabs of board, entire girders he dropped
into the hoppers of those trucks with no hesitation, and no error. He barely
split a brick. Once, when he reckoned a truck was not quite in the right
spot, he lowered the grab and nudged it back a foot, like a brontosaurus
budging a rock with its nose.
For once I didn't mind the wait for a train. I thought then that,
if I weren't a writer, I should like to be that excavator man. Who, if he
read this, would cry: "You what? Do me a favour!" (For I was quite drunk.)
When I visited Amsterdam in 1973, I remember I had a fantasy of
living a tall house overlooking a canal. I would get up each morning at four
o'clock, and go to work in a bakery, helping to produce crusty white loaves
with soft and steamy insides, and rich, moist wholemeal. Then I would go
home to my little room and write for the rest of the day: small, quiet poems
and slender novels of pellucid symbolism. My needs would be few. This
proposition seems no less preposterous and improbable than the former.
PHILIP JOSE FARMER
If I could start my life over again, at the age of eighteen, I would
become a sheep farmer in the Falkland Islands. So much for alternate
futures. Or pasts.
BRUCE STERLING
(Reprinted from SF EYE.) If I gave up writing, I'd have more time
to fool with my computers. They're a constant temptation.
RUDY RUCKER
If I didn't write, I'd like to teach computer languages I don't
really know to weird alien Pacific Rim people who don't really know
English... which is what I am in fact doing this year.
DAVID D'AMASSA
Have to agree with you about the ideal alternate life. I would love
to work in one of the strange used record shops in Providence. Imagine...
getting paid to listen to music. Wow. On slow days I could bring a book and
relax. It sounds like a great job.
PETER LAMBORN WILSON
My secret ambition is to run a coffee shop and hashish parlor,
decorated in orientalismo style, in that future utopia where such things are
no longer illegal. Talk about doing good to the human race, I think this
takes the cake.
*****************
Nasal Gel is safe and simple to use. Just a tiny dab of gel applied to the
inside of the nose delivers Vitamin B-12 directly into your system
***************
BISHOP'S MOVE by Michael Bishop
No piece of contemporary American writing since PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT
has stimulated me as much as Rudy Rucker's "Access to Tools" in the most
recent Astral Avenue. Some observations:
1. Ws no one else struck by the fact that the author of SOFTWARE has accused
Eisenhower's title AT EASE of flaccidity? Weird.
2. Rudy would probably enjoy the word "smegma" even more than he does the
word "sebum." (It's in Pynchon, too.)
3. "Net blowage"? Here in Georgia, we have far greater interest in "gross
blowage," which, along with chicken stealing and buggery, is one of our more
popular prosecutable acts. But, then, the rest of the nation has always had
a tendency to sneer at our backwardness.
4. As much as Rudy will enjoy the word "smegma", just that much will he
appreciate Vonnegut's BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS. It's a lousy novel, but one of
its endearing features is that Vonnegut tells us us the length of every male
character's penis upon first introducing him, a kindness that keeps us from
having to infer this statistic on the basis of dialogue, indirect
characterization, and/or ambiguous plot cues. (Later, Vonnegut wrote a novel
called "Deadeye Dick." I was afraid to read it.)
5. Even so, I believe that all writers should adopt the BREAKFAST OF
CHAMPIONS expository procedure, with the proviso that they modify it by
placing all penile measurements (at ease in one column, tumescent in a
second) in an appendix. One hazard is that longer novels will often have
longer appendices, a perfectly natural development that may encourage envy
among the succinct and/or those who favor female characters. (But maybe it's
time that some OTHER appendage inspired envy anyway.)
6. A personal confession: I have always envied the appendices of Samuel R.
Delany. Some will accuse me of racist stereotyping, but it's still a fact
that some of Delany's novels -- at least three of them -- have TWO
appendices. See Appendix B, p. 371, of FLIGHT FROM NEVERYON (Bantam 1985)
for an example of the way Chip turns Vonnegut's method upside down by SHOWING
rather than TELLING.
7. Rudy's curiosity about the size of Ike's male member has certain, uh,
ramifications for American presidential politics -- i.e., in the future,
"full disclosure" need not apply only to a candidate's financial condition.
(Female candidates, by the way, have ALWAYS been more up front about their
all-important physical attributes than men, especially when the office they
are running for is Miss America.)
8. Meanwhile, remember Big Ike's immortal words on this very topic: "Things
are more like they are today than they have ever been before."
9. Good clean frivolity is always hard to come by, but inanity of the
caliber of 'Access to Tools' is rarer yet. Even if he is the author of a
book called SOFTWARE, I hope Rudy can keep it up.
LIFE'S A BEACH
(photo)
Gregory Benford, Marc Laidlaw and Richard Kadrey (l-r), photographed at
Freestyle Con I, held last weekend on the North Shore of Oahu. Rather than
wear badges, which would have disintegrated in the surf, shirtless attendees
painted their names across their chests in zinc sunscreen. Panel discussions
included "How To Avoid Literay Wipeout" and "Waiting For the Perfect New
Wave." Hang ten to the tenth!
ALL LETTERS SQUEEZED OUT OF THIS ISSUE WILL
REAPPEAR!
********************
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ASTRAL AVENUE
*****************
July 1987 No. 9
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
We're in a quandary. We know a surefire way to make a heap of cash,
but are lacking a certain element of success.
What we're talking about is writing the screenplay for the
inevitable movie of the Iran-Contra affair. Now, right now, before some
Hollywood hack beats us to the punch.
First, we need a title. Can't sell a movie without a socko title.
And we bogged down at CITIZEN SECORD.
Second, we have to have some Superstars lined up to convince the
studio of the commercial potential of this dog. One again, our imagination
supplies Jonathan Winters as Ed Meese, but rolls over and plays dead from
then on.
Can't you help us with your suggestions?
C'mon! We've even bought our tux for Oscar Nite.
DEPARTMENT OF AMPLIFICATIONS
Some of you probably wondered who I was referring to in the last
issue when I said: "Gibson's or Watkins' worlds." In my haste, I confused
two names: Walter Jon Williams and William Jon Watkins. Obviously, Williams
was intended. That's "Williams" as in surname. Don't know how I could have
mixed up two such dissimilar names anyway. Please forgive me for confusing
two such stellar luminaries of our pocket universe.
This is not the only time I've done such a thing. When I was about
eight or nine, I kept getting "retinal" and "rectal" mixed up in my mind.
(Luckily, I never had occasion to use the words in conversation.) Oh, I knew
the two different meanings -- I just couldn't remember which word meant
which.
Now, this was about the time when I discovered SF. In this period,
"retinal scanners" were a big buzzword. (Ah, whatever happened to good ol'
"retinal scanners?" They were the cyberdecks of their day once....) You can
imagine the vivid mental image conjured up by this phrase in my dyslexic
mind. I always wondered why authors never mentioned the characters dropping
trousers before getting their security check....
It seems I might have assembled the last issue, number 8, a little
too promiscuously, since I have received empty mailing wrappers back from the
PO. If anyone hasn't received their copy yet -- and more importantly, even
wants it -- please let me know.
MACHIAVELLIAN LESBIANS OF OZ
Seems to me I recently read that THE WIZARD OF OZ has been placed by
some backwoods school committee on a list of proscribed books, as being
detrimental to children.
All I can say is: "It's about time."
I'm sure you want to know my reasons.
First off, I was thumbing through the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW one
Sunday when they were running one of their special Author Symposiums. The
question this time was something like, "What book had the biggest effect on
you and your career."
Guess what Judith Krantz's answer was?
Yup. THE WIZARD OF OZ. She claimes it started her on her career
when she was just a liddle tyke.
Now, if banning THE WIZ will lead to the future prevention of just a
single Judith Krantz, I, for one, am willing to chuck the whole First
Amendment, and throw in the entire ACLU.
But this is not my primary reason for wanting to get THE WIZARD OF
OZ off the shelves of our schools, and onto the Vatican Index. I'm afraid
that Judith Krantzes will always spontaneously generate, even without this
book. No, what I'm really concerned about is the effect of Baum's book on
the whole moral fabric of our society.
When was THE WIZARD OF OZ published? 1900. When did our
civilization start to go to hell on a poetry-cart? 1900. I don't think the
connection can be made much clearer than that.
What exactly is it, you ask, about THE WIZ that makes it have such a
pernicious effect on the moral character of our citizens? To answer that
question, we have to consider not just the initial book, but the whole
successful, still-in-print series by Baum. (And DEL REY BOOKS has a lot to
answer for, keeping this morally bankrupt mind-rot alive under the guise of
publishing only "gee-whiz," uplifting stuff.)
First off, Oz is elitist. It's described as an earthly paradise
where no one has to work, to which only the select few are granted admission.
Here we have a denial of the proletariat, the source of all fat-cat wealth,
one of the dominant motifs of our century. Oz equals Palm Beach.
Second, the place is a monarchy. A sham monarchy to be sure, as
we'll see in a minute, but still ostensibly a government ruled by one person,
the "benificent" Ozma, and her cabinet. What kind of faith does than breed
in the precious flower of democracy? If paradise is a monarchy, why bother
to vote for old Senator Blowhard in the next election?
Try graphing the decline in voter participation against the copies
of OZ books sold. You'll get a big surprise. (I sure did.)
Thirdly, the place is constantly at war! What better paradigm for
our strife-torn century than OZ? "Nomes" to the left of us, "Hammerheads" to
the right, can't let down your guard for a minute, pump up that
military-industrial complex, boys, no sacrifice is too great.
Let's turn now to the question of what kind of people inhabit the
upper echelons of Oz, and serve as examples of behavior to our
impressionistic youth.
First, there's Ozma, a sex-change deviate. Spent most of her life
as a boy, before being turned into a perpetually young girl. (This place is
a paradise all right -- for pedophiles! It's swarming with Lolitas.) She is
said to be kind and generous, but is really subject to imperial whims and
fits of pique. Countered a Nome invasion by wiping out the memories of the
invaders. (Shades of 1984, a prefiguration of the mind-control that is
another thread in the rotten tapestry of our century.)
I don't propose to dissect the vanity and capriciousness of the
lesser residents of Oz; I think these qualities stand out plainly enough.
What I would like to comment on is the insidious puppet-master behind the
whole charade.
Glinda the "Good."
Glinda lives in a palace attended by hundreds of nubile girls
drafted from all the willing (or unwilling?) maidens of Oz. She is
constantly to be seen fondling and kissing these girls, as are Dorothy and
Ozma, whenever they visit. (Thank God Baum had the decency to draw the
curtains on what these wild petting sessions led to!) It is frequently
stated that Glinda is Ozma's servant. Yet events belie this. Glinda is
constantly saving Ozma's tail from one dire predicament or another. She
issues orders, draws up strategies, supplies direction. Glinda, behind her
mask of servility and obedience, actually runs the whole show. Ozma is her
mouthpiece, her figurehead, just as Ronal Reagan is Nancy's.
What appalling cynicism, what corruption! A monarchy would be bad
enough, but this transcends such models, and sinks into Byzantine or
Florentine duplicity.
And how could the relative positions of Ozma and Glinda be
otherwise, considering Glinda's superior knowledge, as embodied in her Book
of Records? Here we can clearly see the outlines of the most important
feature of our age, the power conferred by information.
Glinda's book, you'll recall, is like Borges' Book of Sand, the
script continually changing, recording everything that happens in Oz and the
world. Everything. What people ate, what they did one millisecond after
they did it, where they are, where they're going. Try to imagine the amount
of writing in this book. Talk about the information explosion! Yet Glinda
is abole to read and absord everything in it, able to find jut the tidbit of
knowledge she needs to complete here Machiavellian schemes. What a metaphor
for the all-knowing state, which governs its citizens absolutely through
complete awareness of their every move.
In conjunction with Ozma's all-seeing magic picture (closed-circuit
TV surveillance?), Glinda's book insures that the domination of Oz's
inhabitants is complete. "A boot stepping on a human face for all
eternity...."
And they call this kid's
stuff....
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
READER: Do not throw this paper away. Read it carefully and thoughtfully.
Though you may not be aware of it, YOUR SOUL is in great danger.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MANY LETTERS, NO REPLIES
Dear Mr. di Philipo (sir):
Thanx for running my pub-shot in your great mag! Do you run FICTION?
My first story "Barking Chrome," was almost accepted by NEW PATHWAYS! And
I'll be in MIRRORSHADES IV: BEYOND THUNDERDOME!
Viva the Revolution, FLUFFY the
CYBERPUP Kenosha, Wis.
From JAMES BLAYLOCK: The last issue (number 7) had some great stuff in it.
From MICHAEL COBLEY: While your ITGO article was fascinating, it didn't go
deep enough, I thought. You talked a lot about whether or not the cyberpunk
of Gibson is today-writ-large, and hovered around the "Is it or is it not SF
prediction?" question without actually asking it. The SF-as-prediction
schtick has been done to death in any number of brain-rot newspapers, yet it
is the paradigm that still weighs down the genre with a stifling accumulation
of archaic media templates. Far more valuable (and liberating) is the idea
of SF-as-theory, which in my view is what Gibson and Sterling et al have been
doing all along.
From GREGORY BENFORD: Talk in AA about whether smalltime magazines are
useful to the field: sure, BUT... not very often. It's certainly true that
some fiction that's experimental gets into them, and some of the experiments
work, but my impression of most cases is that they cling to the conventional
middle much of the time -- or maybe their contributors do.
From WILUM PUGMIRE: For a professional writer and editor to say that non-pro
publications shouldn't publish fiction by amateurs is absurd. I write
entirely for small press horror zines, it is my choice to do so. I am not
impress'd with professional horror magazines, and I'm not interested in
appearing therein. I wouldn't care if all professional publishers vanish'd,
leaving only amateurs. Of cours, I've no interest in turning writing into a
profession, so my outlook is weird.
Rudy Rucker... must not venture too often into ye 12" single section
of record shops, else he would know that disco did not "fade," but is the
current trend in pop music.
From BRUCE STERLING: Re: your recent AA thing on ITGO. Wise up, man. The
reason a "stifling of individual perception" is "crystallizing like amber"
around Gibson is because a lot of lazy-ass writers are deliberately ripping
him off. It's a matter of commerce, not imagination -- it's more convenient
for them to rip Gibson than think. It has nothing to do with your ridiculous
notion that there's only one probable future. Nor are there "only so many
sources," a laughably smug assertion that only shows you are sleepwalking
through as blinding buzzing confusion of potential extrapolative input.
Your entire ITGO piece is a transparent attempt to ideologically
justify your own science-fantasies, like "Skintwister," which would have us
believe that Filipino (Di Filipino?) psychic surgery is, like, for real, man.
The premise of "Skintwister" is harebrained, but it kicks ass, so it's okay
-- nobody's watching, relax. I don't much believe in Gibsonian AI voodoo
gods, either.
Your real problem is that you waste time studying hokey SF genre
structure instead of the actual living breathing structure of the
contemporary world. Start doing this, seriously this time, and a lot of
these acronymic "story types" and "subgenres" will shrink to their true level
of writerly importance, which is miniscule.
From IGOR TOLOCONNICOV: Boris Zavgorodny showed me AA of yours. A curious
work, to say the least. The thing which I sadly lack on outside but greatly
appreciate is much satirical bend of mind. Sterling expired in a new family
transition, and there is a gap in modern contemporary chit-chat zines for me.
Try not to waver under pressure.
From MARC LAIDLAW: Rudy Rucker points out the great title of Ike's
autobiography, but I don't suppose anyone tops Reagan's title: WHERE IS THE
REST OF ME? One pictures a lobotomized schizophrenic wandering down the
dimlit corridors of power, searching for his evil twin.
From ANDREW MC QUIDDY: (AA offers) frank, innovative, and often insightful
essays that are a joy to read, and are both intellectually and ideologically
stimulating. The recent montage column by Rudy was particularly fun to
wander through as it meandered about its myriad anecdotes.
From MISHA CHOCHOLAK: I really loved the TV panel thing. Sorry I made that
wisecrack and Terry Carr passed away.
From RUDY RUCKER: I like Lew's letter (on value of small mags). The astral
convention sounds like a great idea.
From DAVID D'AMMASSA: Brett Rutherford made some interesting points about
allusion, but he reall stepped into a pail of mud by saying "...roick and
song lyrics, by their very nature and because of the limited IQ's of most
performers, are generally inept and regressive if not Neanderthal in
content."
Granted, it is perfectly reasonable that for the sake of research,
Brett has listened to every song ever performed and tested the IQ's of every
rock performer currently in practice, thereby settling in his mind that every
song's lyrics are inept, but forgive me if I doubt it.
From LUKE MC GUFF: I got a chuckle out of Brett Rutherford's arguments
against pop music in stories. Hah! Forget it and calm down, dude, is what I
say.... Somebody who can't appreciate the vulgate poetry of something like
Hank Williams' "Honky Tonk Blues" or Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning" or Jimmy
Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" or the Neville Brothers or Marvin Gaye or David
Byrne... they're lacking a certain element of soul.
In one case, the rock'n'roll/SF allusion has worked the other way.
The Jefferson Airplane quoted Jack Williamson in a song whose title I forget.
The lines are, "In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our rise. In
loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction." Did he get any
royalties from that
quotation?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FOOTNOTES OF GOR by Michael Cobley
1) BLOOD-SPATTERED BEER MUGS OF GOR
2) LONG ARM OF THE GOR
3) GOR AND ORDER
4) SIC TRANSIT GORIA MUNDI
5) THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOR, GO I!
+++++++++++++
RULES FOR SUCCESS
BY MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE SUCCEEDED -- SAVE ONE DOLLAR OUT OF EVERY FIVE --
GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT -- DON'T BE ASHAMED OF HONEST TOIL -- ECONOMY
NECESSARY TO SUCCESS -- HARD WORK THE CARDINAL REQUISITE -- GET A LITTLE
BUSINESS AND STICK TO IT
Astral Avenue 9 Paul Di Filippo 2 Poplar Street Providence RI 02906
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# ASTRAL
Astral Avenue (1986-1987)
## FILES
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral1.txt [ 8807] Astral Avenue #1 (November 1986)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral10.txt [ 18202] Astral Avenue #10 (August 1987)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral2.txt [ 10748] Astral Avenue #2 (December 1986)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral3.txt [ 10016] Astral Avenue #3 (January 1987)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral4.txt [ 14065] Astral Avenue #4 (February 1987)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral5.txt [ 11441] Astral Avenue #5 (March 1987)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral6.txt [ 10986] Astral Avenue #6 (April 1987)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral7.txt [ 26473] Astral Avenue #7 (May 1987)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral8.txt [ 15813] Astral Avenue #8 (June 1987)
=> gemini://informis.land/textfiles/magazines/ASTRAL/astral9.txt [ 15368] Astral Avenue #9 (July 1987)