"Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable." - Milton Friedman
Towards the end of WW2, Friedrich von Hayek wrote and published 'The Road to Serfdom', which argued that fascism is the inevitable endpoint of giving the state too much power over the economy. Powerful governments led to oppressive societies and individual serfdom. The economy should be controlled by individuals: the free market ensured the freedom of individuals.
In the aftermath of WW2, a group of Western intellectuals, including Hayek and Friedman, gathered to pass judgement on the world. Their conclusion: governments had too much power, too much control. Individual freedom and private property were in danger. There would be more tyrannies, another great war.
Over the years, this group and their associates founded a range of economic think tanks to propagate and popularize Neoliberal ideas (neo = new, liberal = economic freedom, free from government control and regulation). In America in particular, Neoliberalism got mixed up with the 'Greed is Good' objectivism of Ayn Rand. These think tanks received a lot of funding from big corporations, who would benefit from free-market policies.
The 1970s were a period of economic and political turmoil. The think tanks upped their game, laying the foundations for the Neoliberal policies that Thatcher's government would implement. Privatization of public assets. Deregulation. Tax cuts for the rich. The Neoliberal revolution had begun.
In 2004, a new economic think tank was born: the TaxPayers' Alliance, a corporate entity that unashamedly pretends to be the voice of the masses. (Recently, the head of the TPA advised the government to cut pensioner benefits immediately, despite all their election promises not to, because old people will likely die or have forgotten by the next election.) Throughout the 2000s, the TPA campaigned aggressively against government spending.
Until 2008, the Conservative party had agreed with New Labour's spending plans, sometimes even suggesting that they spend more. But the economic crisis, created by an under-regulated financial sector, was an opportunity: the Conservatives teamed up with the TaxPayer's Alliance to rewrite history: government overspending had ruined the economy. The Conservatives, the TPA, and the Media Overlords all propagated this retcon. After teaming up with the Conservatives in 2010, so did the Liberal Democrats. The TPA advised the coalition government on its policies. Spending cuts. Privatization. Deregulation. Tax cuts for the rich. The Neoliberal revolution was taken to new extremes.
And now look at the news.
(Sources:
'The Establishment' by Owen Jones
'How Corrupt is Britain?' edited by David Whyte
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34439965?SThisFB )
Friday 13 November 2015
My Politics Phase Begins
Having spent a year figuring out my opinion on religion, I'm now moving on to my politics phase. (My engrossment in politics in the run up to the General Election was like a 'Coming Soon' sneak preview.) I'll write some posts about politics and economics to organize my thoughts as I go. I still consider myself a politics newbie, so please point out errors and misunderstandings. For news, I follow The Guardian, The Economist, The Canary, The Independent, Another Angry Voice, BBC News, MainlyMacro, and Boris Johnson, and have subscribed to Private Eye. Any other sources I should follow? (I only have Boris on the right so far.) Good books to read? (I have a few titles floating around in my mind, but recommendations are always welcome.)
I've been reading about corruption in Britain ('How Corrupt is Britain?' edited by David Whyte), and there is rather a lot. Since 1979, Britain has undergone a 'neoliberal revolution', beginning with the Thatcher government and continuing to the present day. Neoliberalism is an economic doctrine that sees market exchange as the ethical basis for human action. Inspired by Ayn Rand's 'Selfishness Is A Virtue' pseudo-philosophy, neoliberalism promotes the individualist values of hedonism and wealth accumulation, while undermining more collectivist values, such as concern for other people and the wider society. Self-interest is good for society; self-interested politicians are better than well-meaning zealots who think they know what's best for others. Businesses boosting their profits are good, because market exchange is the core of society: governments shouldn't interfere with businesses boosting their profits.
So from 1979 to the present we had state assets sold into private hands, with government money being used as a convenient cash-cow for private profit; 'a revolving door' between government and the private sector, with politicians becoming lobbyists and businessmen becoming policy advisers; and a global financial crisis caused by an under-regulated financial sector. The causes of the economic crash were then retconned by the politicians and media: it was caused by government overspending: time to cut government spending, sell assets into private hands, while our politicians and their mates make a lot of money in the process!
I've been reading about corruption in Britain ('How Corrupt is Britain?' edited by David Whyte), and there is rather a lot. Since 1979, Britain has undergone a 'neoliberal revolution', beginning with the Thatcher government and continuing to the present day. Neoliberalism is an economic doctrine that sees market exchange as the ethical basis for human action. Inspired by Ayn Rand's 'Selfishness Is A Virtue' pseudo-philosophy, neoliberalism promotes the individualist values of hedonism and wealth accumulation, while undermining more collectivist values, such as concern for other people and the wider society. Self-interest is good for society; self-interested politicians are better than well-meaning zealots who think they know what's best for others. Businesses boosting their profits are good, because market exchange is the core of society: governments shouldn't interfere with businesses boosting their profits.
So from 1979 to the present we had state assets sold into private hands, with government money being used as a convenient cash-cow for private profit; 'a revolving door' between government and the private sector, with politicians becoming lobbyists and businessmen becoming policy advisers; and a global financial crisis caused by an under-regulated financial sector. The causes of the economic crash were then retconned by the politicians and media: it was caused by government overspending: time to cut government spending, sell assets into private hands, while our politicians and their mates make a lot of money in the process!
Wednesday 28 October 2015
Gods and Spaceships: Religion in Science Fiction
Science fiction, at its best, explores human nature, our place in the cosmos, etc - life, the universe, and everything - in a way that rivals the myths of the traditional religions. As rationalism wore away at belief in gods, as science started illuminating the mysteries of the universe, as technology changed the world, something was needed to fill the humanity's need for myths. SF was one of the substitutes that arose. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, arguably the first SF novel, is explicitly about humans having the power of gods: creating life. The myths of the old religions told of the past; SF gives us a mythology of the coming future. Like the best religious myths, the best SF stories last not because they are literally true (SF is awful at accurate prediction), but because they seem to awaken you to greater percipience of who we are, of what we have become, of where we were, of wherein we are hastening, etc.
I can easily see myself being deeply religious - in the traditional sense, of being a devout believer in a deity - had I been born earlier, or had my life gone in another direction. I find religion fascinating. I once loved science, but I was scienced out by the time I graduated from university. I still love science fiction. Observing SF writers and fans, I can't help but imagine them as prophets and adherents of of a modern pseudo-religion, with its own rituals, jargon, pilgrimages, canon disputes, divisions, etc.
Given the origins of SF as a substitute for religious myths, it is unsurprising that SF stories are often hostile towards the traditional religions. When SF author explore religious themes positively, they tend to be rather unorthodox in their conclusions.
Arthur C. Clake, the 'Prophet of the Space Age', described himself as an atheist 'fascinated by the concept of God'; he left very specific instructions for his funeral: "Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral." In his work, he often displayed contempt for religion:
Arthur C. Clake, the 'Prophet of the Space Age', described himself as an atheist 'fascinated by the concept of God'; he left very specific instructions for his funeral: "Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral." In his work, he often displayed contempt for religion:
The City and The Stars (1956) - my favourite of Clarke's novels - is set on a dried-up Earth one billion years in the future, where the last remnants of humanity live under a giant dome in the city of Diaspar. About halfway through, Clarke lets you know what he thinks about religion:
'Throughout the earlier part of its history, the human race had brought forth an endless succession of prophets, seers, messiahs, and evangelists who convinced themselves and their followers that to them alone were the secrets of the universe revealed. Some of them succeeded in establishing religions which survived for many generations and influenced billions of men; others were forgotten even before their deaths.
'Throughout the earlier part of its history, the human race had brought forth an endless succession of prophets, seers, messiahs, and evangelists who convinced themselves and their followers that to them alone were the secrets of the universe revealed. Some of them succeeded in establishing religions which survived for many generations and influenced billions of men; others were forgotten even before their deaths.
The rise of science, which with monotonous regularity refuted the cosmologies of the prophets and produced miracles which they could never match, eventually destroyed all these faiths. It did not destroy the awe, nor the reverence and humility, which all intelligent beings felt as they contemplated the stupendous universe in which they found themselves. What it did weaken, and finally obliterate, were the countless religions each of which claimed with unbelievable arrogance, that it was the sole repository of the truth and that its millions of rivals and predecessors were all mistaken.'
In his later novel The Fountains of Paradise (1979) Clarke is even more anti-religious. The novel's 22nd century hero demolishes an ancient monastery to build a space elevator: the old faiths are to be swept away to make room for the splendors of science:'Already, it was the greatest wonder of the world. Until Morgan put his foot down and restricted the site to essential engineering staff, there was a continual flood of visitors - "pilgrims", someone had ironically called them - paying homage to the sacred mountain's last miracle.'
Just in case the reader is in any doubt about who the hero is, Clarke includes a small subplot about humanity's first encounter with an alien intelligence having a devastating effect on religion ('It had put an end to the billions of words of pious gibberish with which apparently intelligent men had addled their minds for centuries.'). After absorbing the entire Encyclopedia Terrae, the alien intelligence informs humanity that the 'God hypothesis' only arises among species with two-parent reproduction...
(Clarke also quotes Freud:
'While the different religions wrangle with one another as to which of them is in possession of the truth, in our view the truth of religion may be altogether disregarded... If one attempts to assign religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.' )
... And proceeds to demolish it in the manner of Dawkins, Grayling, or Hitchens:
'The hypothesis you refer to as God, though not disprovable by logic alone, is unnecessary for the following reason.
If you assume that the universe can be quote explained unquote as the creation of an entity known as God, he must obviously be of a higher degree of organisation than his product. Thus you have more than doubled the size of the original problem, and have taken the first step on a diverging infinite regress. William of Ockham pointed out as recently as your fourteenth century that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. I cannot therefore understand why this debate continues.'
But TFOP also features a scientist character who says "Now that Starglider has effectively destroyed all traditional religions, we can at last pay serious attention to the concept of God".
Clarke named Olaf Stapledon as his biggest influence. Stapledon's Star Maker (1937) is perhaps the ultimate science fiction novel dealing with religious themes. The narrator astral projects into space and travels across the entire history of the universe, witnessing civilizations rise and fall, culminating in a meeting with the titular Star Maker, the creator of the universe, God. In an early draft of Star Maker, posthumously published as Nebula Maker (1976), Stapledon referred to the maker as God throughout: I expect, in the later drafts, he decided against this in order to distance himself from the traditional religions.
Stapledon advocated 'agnostic mysticism': he found theistic religion too obviously false, but scientific materialism did not satisfy his religious yearnings. If you find yourself torn between skepticism and mysticism, as I do, then reading Star Maker might be, like it was for me, a conversionary religious experience - turning me into a Stapledonian evangelist, going on about Star Maker until my friends were sick of it.
'Overhead, obscurity unveiled a star. One tremulous arrow of light, projected how many thousands of years ago, now stung my nerves with vision, and my heart with fear. For in such a universe as this what significance could there be in our fortuitous, our frail, our evanescent community?
But now irrationally I was seized with a strange worship, not, surely of the star, that mere furnace which mere distance falsely sanctified, but of something other, which the dire contrast of the star and us signified to the heart. Yet what, what could thus be signified? Intellect, peering beyond the star, discovered no Star Maker, but only darkness; no Love, no Power even, but only Nothing. And yet the heart praised.'
Star Maker is perhaps the most ambitious book you will ever read: billions of years of universal history condensed into less than 300 pages. Stapledon shows you things that you would never have imagined yourself: that is his power.
"Judged by the standards of the novel, it is remarkably bad. In fact, it is no novel at all," Stapledon admitted in his preface to the first edition. This is no character driven plotted story, it is a tour of the universe, a sacred pilgrimage through time and space:
'The sustaining motive of our pilgrimage had been the hunger which formerly drove men on Earth in search of God. Yes, we had one and all left our native planets in order to discover whether, regarding the cosmos as a whole, the spirit which we all in our hearts obscurely knew and haltingly prized, the spirit which on Earth we sometimes call humane, was Lord of the Universe, or outlaw; almighty, or crucified. And now it was becoming clear to us that if the cosmos had any lord at all, he was not that spirit but some other, whose purpose in creating the endless fountain of worlds was not fatherly toward the beings that he had made, but alien, inhuman, dark.
Yet while we felt dismay, we felt also increasingly the hunger to see and to face fearlessly whatever spirit was indeed the spirit of this cosmos. For as we pursued our pilgrimage, passing again and again from tragedy to farce, from farce to glory, from glory often to final tragedy, we felt increasingly the sense that some terrible, some holy, yet at the same time unimaginably outrageous and lethal, secret lay just beyond our reach. Again and again we were torn between horror and fascination, between moral rage against the universe (or the Star Maker) and unreasonable worship.
This same conflict was to be observed in all those worlds that were of our own mental stature. Observing these worlds and the phases of their past growth, and groping as best we might toward the next plane of spiritual development, we came at last to see plainly the first stages of any world's pilgrimage. Even in the most primitive ages of every normal intelligent world there existed in some minds the impulse to seek and to praise some universal thing. At first this impulse was confused with the craving for protection by some mighty power. Inevitably the beings theorized that the admired thing must be Power, and that worship was mere propitiation. Thus they came to conceive the almighty tyrant of the universe, with themselves as his favored children. But in time it became clear to their prophets that mere Power was not what the praiseful heart adored. Then theory enthroned Wisdom, or Law, or Righteousness. And after an age of obedience to some phantom lawgiver, or to divine legality itself, the beings found that these concepts too were inadequate to describe the indescribable glory that the heart confronted in all things, and mutely prized in all things.'
One of the worlds visited is the 'Other Earth', whose inhabitants are basically weird-looking humans with poor vision and hearing ('Music, such as we know, never developed in this world.'), but enhanced scent and taste ('These beings tasted not only with their mouths, but with their moist black hands and with their feet. Thus they were afforded an extraordinarily rich and intimate experience of their planet.') This, of course, means that their cultures place greater emphasis on scent and taste than ours do, and so with their theology:
'Tribal gods had of course been endowed with the taste-characters most moving to the tribe's own members. Later, when monotheisms arose, descriptions of God's power, his wisdom, his justice,
his benevolence, were accompanied by descriptions of his taste. In mystical literature God was often likened to an ancient and mellow wine; and some reports of religious experience suggested that this gustatory-ecstasy was in many ways akin to the reverent zest of our own wine-tasters, savoring some rare vintage.
Unfortunately, owing to the diversity of gustatory human types, there had seldom been any widespread agreement as to the taste of God. Religious wars had been waged to decide whether he was in the main sweet or salt, or whether his preponderant flavor was one of the many gustatory characters which my own race cannot conceive. Some teachers insisted that only the feet could taste him, others only the hands or the mouth, others that he could be experienced only in the subtle complex of gustatory flavors known as the immaculate union, which was a sensual, and mainly sexual, ecstasy induced by contemplation of intercourse with the deity.
Other teachers declared that, though God was indeed tasty, it was not through any bodily instrument but to the naked spirit that his essence was revealed; and that his was a flavor more subtle and delicious than the flavor of the beloved, since it included all that was most fragrant and spiritual in man, and infinitely more. Some went so far as to declare that God should be thought of not as a person at all but as actually being this flavor...
Though all were devout, and blasphemy was regarded with horror, the general attitude to the deity was one of blasphemous commercialism. Men assumed that the flavor of deity could be bought for all eternity with money or with ritual. Further, the God whom they worshiped with the superb and heart-searching language of an earlier age was now conceived either as a just but jealous employer or as an indulgent parent, or else as sheer physical energy. The crowning vulgarity was the conviction that in no earlier age had religion been so widespread and so enlightened. It was almost universally agreed that the profound teachings of the prophetic era were only now being understood in the sense in which they had originally been intended by the prophets themselves.'
As you can see, Stapledon uses the Other Earth to critique Our Earth. Stapledon's descriptions of the Star Maker bring to mind the apophatic theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who wrote that God was so ineffable that all descriptions of God must be negative. God is not great, God is not love, God is not truth, God is not power, God is not life, God is not divine. We cannot even say that God 'exists', because our experience of existence is based solely on individual, finite beings whose mode of being bears no relation to being itself. God is not one of the things that are; God is all things in everything and nothing in anything:
'I was indeed confronted by the Star Maker, but the Star Maker was now revealed as more than the creative and therefore finite spirit. He now appeared as the eternal and perfect spirit which comprises all things and all times, and contemplates timelessly the infinitely diverse host which it comprises. The illumination which flooded in on me and struck me down to blind worship was a glimmer, so it seemed to me, of the eternal spirit's own all-penetrating experience.
It was with anguish and horror, and yet with acquiescence, even with praise, that I felt or seemed to feel something of the eternal spirit's temper as it apprehended in one intuitive and timeless vision all our lives. Here was no pity, no proffer of salvation, no kindly aid. Or here were all pity and all love, but mastered by a frosty ecstasy. Our broken lives, our loves, our follies, our betrayals, our forlorn and gallant defenses, were one and all calmly anatomized, assessed, and placed. True, they were one and all lived through with complete understanding, with insight and full sympathy, even with passion. But sympathy was not ultimate in the temper of the eternal spirit; contemplation was. Love was not absolute; contemplation was. And though there was love, there was also hate comprised within the spirit's temper, for there was cruel delight in the contemplation of every horror, and glee in the downfall of the virtuous. All passions, it seemed, were comprised within the spirit's temper; but mastered, icily gripped within the cold, clear, crystal ecstasy of contemplation.
But this was not the worst. For in saying that the spirit's temper was contemplation, I imputed to it a finite human experience, and an emotion; thereby comforting myself, even though with cold comfort. But in truth the eternal spirit was ineffable. Nothing whatever could be truly said about it. Even to name it "spirit" was perhaps to say more than was justified. Yet to deny it that name would be no less mistaken; for whatever it was, it was more, not less, than spirit, more, not less, than any possible human meaning of that word. And from the human level, even from the level of a cosmical mind, this "more," obscurely and agonizingly glimpsed, was a dread mystery, compelling adoration.'
C.S. Lewis called Star Maker 'sheer devil worship', and wrote an entire trilogy of SF novels in response. Lewis was getting annoyed that space stories were generally anti-religious:
'I like the whole interplanetary ideas as a mythology and simply wished to conquer for my own (Christian) point of view what has always hitherto been used by the opposite side.'
- Lewis, in a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green
I have not yet ready any of the Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). I am interested in Lewis' take on Christian SF, but have forbidden myself from purchasing any more books until my current to-read pile has been exhausted.
It is worth pointing out that, despite his hostility towards religion, Stapledon accepted that Christianity was a positive force for a lot of people. The first encounter of Four Encounters (1976), 'A Christian', ends with Stapledon deciding not to argue back:
'I was preparing to do battle against his proselytizing, and to conquer his faith. But his eyes checked me. For his Christ had indeed saved him from his self-loving despair; and without his Christ he might be lost. In his present state of partial waking (so I told myself, perhaps complacently) he could not endure the severer vision.
So I said, "You have been very good to me, and very patient. But the upshot is that your way is not mine. You need belief; for me it is unnecessary. Without it I travel lighter, yes and perhaps farther. Strangely, in my unbelief I gain full peace, the peace that passes understanding. And joy too. I have found joy in the sheer given reality, with all its dark-bright beauty. Light has come to you in one way, to me in another. And though you have not won me, I am grateful to you. Let neither of us grudge the other his vision."
He was silent for some time. Then in a low voice he said, "I think you do not fully know what suffering is, and the illumination that it brings. May God take all joy from you, may he torment you as he tormented me, so that at last your eyes may be opened, and the true light may save you."'
I consider that a rather dickish response from the Christian, but that's me.
From one unconventional encounter with the divine to another: VALIS (1981) by Philip K. Dick. Starting in 1974, Dick underwent a period of revelation/mental breakdown, during which he thought that God, or an artificial intelligence from the future, was sending him messages using a beam of pink light. VALIS is a third-person fictionalized account of this period, with the Dick character being called Horselover Fat. As Dick/Fat tried to make sense of his experiences, he found the usual view of God - the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-seeing king of the universe - unsatisfying:
'You cannot say that an encounter with God is to mental illness what death is to cancer: the logical outcome of a deteriorating illness process. The technical term - theological technical term, not psychiatric - is theophany. A theophany consists of a self-disclosure from the divine. It does not consist of something the percipient does; it consists of something the divine - the God or gods, the higher power - does. How are we to distinguish a genuine theophany from a mere hallucination on the part of the percipient?
...
If you grant the possibility of a divine entity, you cannot deny it the power of self-disclosure; obviously any entity or being worthy of the term 'god' would possess, without effort, that ability. The real question (as I see it) is not, Why theophanies? but, Why aren't there more? The key concept to account for this is the idea of the deus absconditus, the hidden, concealed, secret or unknown god.... if God exists, he must be a deus absconditus - with the exception of his rare theophanies, or else he does not exist at all. The latter view makes more sense, except for the theophanies, rare though they be. All that is required is one absolutely verified theophany and the latter view is voided... The vividness of the impression which a supposed theophany makes on the percipient is no proof of authenticity.'
And was irritated by the hypocrisy of the traditional religions:
'It took hours to find the citation in Luke; finally he had it, to set before Sherri.
"I'll ask Larry if that's one of the corrupt parts of the Bible," Sherri said.
Pissed off, Fat said, "Sherri, why don't you cut out all the sections of the Bible you agree with and paste them together? And not have to deal with the rest."'
Dick wrote hundred of thousands of words of exegesis, theorizing about the nature of God, developing his own cosmology. He moved further away from traditional views of God towards Gnosticism, and further into madness. Entry #51 from his exegesis:
'#51. The primordial source of all religions lies with the ancestors of the Dogon tribe, who got their cosmogony and cosmology directly from the three-eyed invaders who visited long ago. The three-eyed invaders are mute and deaf and telepathic, could not breathe in our atmosphere, had the elongated misshapen skull of Ikhnaton and emanated from a planet in the star-system Sirius. Although they had no hands but had, instead, pincer claws such as a crab has, they were great builders. They covertly influence our history towards a fruitful end.
By now Fat had totally lost touch with reality.'
There are several competing theories about when and how Gnosticism originated. Some argue that it is pre-Christian, having its roots in ancient shamanism, others argue that it began with Christianity. In Christianity's early years, there was no established canon, literacy rates were low, and the Gentile Christians - often from poor backgrounds - had almost no knowledge of the Jewish scriptures that their beliefs were supposed to be continuing. When some early Christians got round to reading the Hebrew scriptures, they were very confused. Why was the loving God of love, as represented by Jesus, being such a prick? Why was he advocating and committing genocide? Why had he not fixed the world, if he was supposedly all-powerful? Why was there so much evil in the world? Gnostic Christians resolved these gaping plot chasms in what became mainstream Christianity. The true God was immaterial and had no power over the material world. During the creation of the material world, the true God was broken, with parts of God being imprisoned in material bodies. The material world is ruled over by an insane false god who believes that he is the One True God. The true, immaterial God is in conflict with material creator, trying to be re-united with the God-fragments trapped in material bodies. It's a fun mythology.
Dick explored Gnosticism in two further novels (which I haven't read): The Divine Invasion (1980) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1981). An earlier novel, A Maze of Death (1970), is set in a future with an entirely fictional theology. Dick's words:
'The theology in this novel is not an analogue of any known religion. It stems from an attempt made by William Sarill and myself to develop an abstract, logical system of religious thought, based on the arbitrary postulate that God exists.'
This post is getting rather long. My theory is that SF, with notable exceptions, is anti-religious or advocates an unorthodox. Clarke thought that science would supplant religion, but found the idea of God fascinating. Stapledon thought orthodox theology was obviously false, but advocated an 'agnostic mysticism' with similarities to the apophatic theologies of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Moses Maimonides, and other mystical theologians (apophatic theology is arguably more traditional than imagining God as an anthropomorphic divine dictator). Dick underwent a religious experience, gradually losing touch with reality, and arrived at a Gnostic theology which slammed together various religious traditions and SF ideas.
Hopefully I will write a sequel to this post. There are many other works I would like to look at to further explore this theory, for example:
And, of course, Jesus On Mars (1979) by Philip José Farmer:
From one unconventional encounter with the divine to another: VALIS (1981) by Philip K. Dick. Starting in 1974, Dick underwent a period of revelation/mental breakdown, during which he thought that God, or an artificial intelligence from the future, was sending him messages using a beam of pink light. VALIS is a third-person fictionalized account of this period, with the Dick character being called Horselover Fat. As Dick/Fat tried to make sense of his experiences, he found the usual view of God - the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-seeing king of the universe - unsatisfying:
'You cannot say that an encounter with God is to mental illness what death is to cancer: the logical outcome of a deteriorating illness process. The technical term - theological technical term, not psychiatric - is theophany. A theophany consists of a self-disclosure from the divine. It does not consist of something the percipient does; it consists of something the divine - the God or gods, the higher power - does. How are we to distinguish a genuine theophany from a mere hallucination on the part of the percipient?...
If you grant the possibility of a divine entity, you cannot deny it the power of self-disclosure; obviously any entity or being worthy of the term 'god' would possess, without effort, that ability. The real question (as I see it) is not, Why theophanies? but, Why aren't there more? The key concept to account for this is the idea of the deus absconditus, the hidden, concealed, secret or unknown god.... if God exists, he must be a deus absconditus - with the exception of his rare theophanies, or else he does not exist at all. The latter view makes more sense, except for the theophanies, rare though they be. All that is required is one absolutely verified theophany and the latter view is voided... The vividness of the impression which a supposed theophany makes on the percipient is no proof of authenticity.'
And was irritated by the hypocrisy of the traditional religions:
'It took hours to find the citation in Luke; finally he had it, to set before Sherri.
"I'll ask Larry if that's one of the corrupt parts of the Bible," Sherri said.
Pissed off, Fat said, "Sherri, why don't you cut out all the sections of the Bible you agree with and paste them together? And not have to deal with the rest."'
Dick wrote hundred of thousands of words of exegesis, theorizing about the nature of God, developing his own cosmology. He moved further away from traditional views of God towards Gnosticism, and further into madness. Entry #51 from his exegesis:
'#51. The primordial source of all religions lies with the ancestors of the Dogon tribe, who got their cosmogony and cosmology directly from the three-eyed invaders who visited long ago. The three-eyed invaders are mute and deaf and telepathic, could not breathe in our atmosphere, had the elongated misshapen skull of Ikhnaton and emanated from a planet in the star-system Sirius. Although they had no hands but had, instead, pincer claws such as a crab has, they were great builders. They covertly influence our history towards a fruitful end.
By now Fat had totally lost touch with reality.'
There are several competing theories about when and how Gnosticism originated. Some argue that it is pre-Christian, having its roots in ancient shamanism, others argue that it began with Christianity. In Christianity's early years, there was no established canon, literacy rates were low, and the Gentile Christians - often from poor backgrounds - had almost no knowledge of the Jewish scriptures that their beliefs were supposed to be continuing. When some early Christians got round to reading the Hebrew scriptures, they were very confused. Why was the loving God of love, as represented by Jesus, being such a prick? Why was he advocating and committing genocide? Why had he not fixed the world, if he was supposedly all-powerful? Why was there so much evil in the world? Gnostic Christians resolved these gaping plot chasms in what became mainstream Christianity. The true God was immaterial and had no power over the material world. During the creation of the material world, the true God was broken, with parts of God being imprisoned in material bodies. The material world is ruled over by an insane false god who believes that he is the One True God. The true, immaterial God is in conflict with material creator, trying to be re-united with the God-fragments trapped in material bodies. It's a fun mythology.
Dick explored Gnosticism in two further novels (which I haven't read): The Divine Invasion (1980) and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer (1981). An earlier novel, A Maze of Death (1970), is set in a future with an entirely fictional theology. Dick's words:
'The theology in this novel is not an analogue of any known religion. It stems from an attempt made by William Sarill and myself to develop an abstract, logical system of religious thought, based on the arbitrary postulate that God exists.'
This post is getting rather long. My theory is that SF, with notable exceptions, is anti-religious or advocates an unorthodox. Clarke thought that science would supplant religion, but found the idea of God fascinating. Stapledon thought orthodox theology was obviously false, but advocated an 'agnostic mysticism' with similarities to the apophatic theologies of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Moses Maimonides, and other mystical theologians (apophatic theology is arguably more traditional than imagining God as an anthropomorphic divine dictator). Dick underwent a religious experience, gradually losing touch with reality, and arrived at a Gnostic theology which slammed together various religious traditions and SF ideas.
Hopefully I will write a sequel to this post. There are many other works I would like to look at to further explore this theory, for example:
- The Christian SF novels of C.S. Lewis
- The other two Gnostic novels of Philip K. Dick
- A Canticle For Leibowitz (1960) by Walter M. Miller, about a Catholic monastery in a post-apocalyptic world
- Behold The Man (1969) by Michael Moorcock, about a time-traveller who meets Jesus of Nazareth, and is very disappointed
- The Handmaid's Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood, about a totalitarian Christian theocracy in near-future America
- Lord of Light (1967) by Roger Zelazny, about a human colony ruled by Hindu deities
- Hard To Be A God (1964) by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, about a human observing a primitive alien society, and struggling not to intervene to prevent suffering
- Wandering Stars (1974) and More Wandering Stars (1981), anthologies of Jewish SF
And, of course, Jesus On Mars (1979) by Philip José Farmer:
Wednesday 23 September 2015
Five Disappointments
I have been very unimpressed by many of the books I've been reading recently. I have given up on on five of them. Three were SF Masterworks:
1) The Sea and Summer (1987) by George Turner opened well: an unspecified time in the future, a scholar and a playwright wander around some ruined, partially-submerged 21st century tower blocks, complete with faded graffiti murals:
'The subject common to graffiti the world over appeared again and again in blatant crudity and total lack of draftsmanship, but the finest example, drawn over all the rest and pristine in reproduction, graced the door of the corner flat. In brilliant, impertinent white a huge penis stretched most of the height of the door, balanced on a pair of gargantuan testicles.'
But then we move onto the story proper, which the scholar has reconstructed from historical records:
'"It is not an imagined fiction. It is researched. All the characters lived and left records on tape and in data banks. There are descriptions, even pictures and police recordings providing every detail."
...
The screen turned black and the first dull yellow letters appeared:
The Sea and Summer
A Historical Reconstruction
by
Lenna Williams'
And that's when it gets boring. One could argue that Turner deliberately made the main story boring because it's supposed to be a scholar's historical reconstruction, not an artist's fantasy, but I'm not giving him that. The characters narrate with almost identical voices, and they each narrate the same events. It's so slow. I gave up when a third character started narrating events which had already been described to me by two other characters.
I read in one review that The Sea and Summer may only have been included in the SF Masterworks because the collection is short on Australian authors. I think it's more likely that it was included because the story is, in some ways, eerily prescient:
After a global financial crisis, a lot of the population becomes unemployed and has to live off inadequate state benefits. Those living on benefits are demonised by the media and generally ignored by people still living comfortably, such as the Conway family.
But then Mr Conway is made redundant. He commits suicide because he knows he won't get another job. His wife and two sons, now living off benefits, move to a rougher area and start hanging around with other people living off benefits. Boring things happen. One of the sons is good at maths. The other goes to a fancy academy for clever people. The mother gets romantically involved with someone. I gave up after 154 pages.
The Sea and Summer, like Stand on Zanzibar (1968), presents a dystopian 21st century future which is not as engrossing or terrifying as our dystopian 21st century present.
2) Floating Worlds (1976) by Cecelia Holland is, apparently, a very influential space opera, 'a neglected SF masterpiece.' Set an unspecified time in the future, it opens with the protagonist wandering round the ruins of Manhattan as a tourist:
'From here she could see through the broken walls to the next row of ruins, and through them to the next, all huge, the biggest buildings she had ever seen. The people who had built this city had dominated earth for three centuries, by money, by force, and by guile; they had colonized Mars, reached as far as Uranus, cracked atoms and made whole cities out of polymer, and Manhattan had been the heart of that empire.
...
"Did they live here? In glass buildings?" Some fable moved elusively at the edge of her memory.
"No. They lived somewhere else and came in here during the day."
"Now tell me the truth."
"I'm sorry, kitch, that is the truth."
She stood looking up at the glass. Maybe in those days glass had been more common than it was now. Waves of stain crossed it, traces of dry dust like tracks from the time when the ruins had been under water.'
In this distant future, Earth is an anarchist state, Mars is consumerist, Luna (the Moon) is fascist, while the moons of Uranus and Saturn make up the Styth Empire. The Styths are a mutant race of humans who believe they should conquer everything.
The protagonist, Paula Mendoza, is hired by the Committee for the Revolution, a sort-of vestigial government which oversees the Earth's anarchy, to negotiate a truce with Styths, because she happens to speak their language. Paula doesn't really care about the job:
'She had already decided not to put anything on the walls since she was keeping the job only until she found other work... She felt herself being forced into a role. Her life was closing in on her. She hated the Committee job, even the Styth case bored her, but it paid well and she kept putting off quitting because she liked the money.'
Holland's prose is very terse: she uses a lot of short sentences. This makes everything feel like the tense build-up to some climactic revelation or catastrophe:
'Paula took the midnight train to New York. Walking up the aisle of the car, she saw Bunker sitting next to the window on a forward bench. After a moment she put her bag on a rack over his head and sat down opposite him He had a book plug in his ear; he ignored her. She stretched her legs out before her. The train was almost empty. The lights flashed on and off, and the bench under her jerked forward. She braced herself. The train bounded forward, stopped cold, and started up again. They rolled off into the dark.'
Paula and Bunker proceed to have a short, boring conversation, and then Paula goes home.
Fifty pages in, at the end of chapter one, Paula is summoned to Mars to chat with some Styth negotiators. Throughout chapter two she has boring conversations with people on Mars, and then decides to fuck one of the top Styths:
'He straightened up on his arms. She could scarcely breathe in the dense fragrance he was giving off. When she kissed him again, his skin was warm, almost feverish. They got up and undressed. His body was perfect. Dressed, he simply looked massive. His broad chest swelled into his back, the muscle and bone smoothly shaped down to his long waist. He had an erection. They lay down side by side on the couch. His skin warmed her. While she explored him with her hands and her mouth she tried to get used to his scent. All in silence they joined together. His eyes closed, as if he were doing it alone. She rubbed herself down on his thick stalk, her hand on his hip, intent on the swelling tension in her groin.'
Floating Worlds feels like a trashy soap opera... in space!
I gave up when the big reveal at the end of chapter two, 105 pages in, was OH NO! SHE'S PREGNANT WITH HIS BABY!
Not my thing.
3) Synners (1991) by Pat Cadigan. I did not get very far with this one. I found Cadigan's writing extremely irritating. I felt like she was trying too hard to be cool, down with the kids. The story is about tattooed druggie hackers who listen to rock music and go against a big corporate record label, or something.
At the start of chapter 2, one character (who is of course very cool) is in court, wondering whether she will be found guilty of anything and charged. The speculation concludes with:
'Fuck it, what difference did one more charge make, anyway? The fines would clean her out and then some, one more garnishment on her wages, so-fucking-what. All she cared about now was getting back on the street'
Later, she wonders what her BFF Mark is doing:
'But the best question was what the fuck was Mark doing there all on his own without a word to her. She and Mark were in it together, always had been. They'd been in it together in the beginning, and when Galen had bought most of the video-production company out from under the Beater, and they'd been in it together when Galen had let the monster conglomerate take EyeTraxx over from him, and they were supposed to be in it together the day after tomorrow, when they were due to show up for their first full day working for the monster conglomerate.'
Cadigan is so fucking cool that she italicises the word 'fuck'.
I gave up at page 36. Not my thing.
The other two disappointments were Fatherland (1992) by Robert Harris and Naked Lunch (1959) by William Burroughs.
Fatherland came across as a cliché detective thriller with an alternate history gimmick: in 1960s Nazi Germany, loner cop Xavier March investigates a brutal murder, which leads him to discover a terrifying conspiracy going right up to the highest echelons of government..I didn't reach the end, but I could see where it was going and couldn't be bothered sitting it out. I checked Wikipedia.
SPOILER ALERT.
March discovers that the Holocaust happened.
Naked Lunch is a very unpleasant and nonsensical read. There's no real plot. The chapters can be read in any order. Drug addiction and homosexuality are recurring themes. I gave up when I realised that if I was reading this on the internet, not in a 'Modern Classics' edition, I would have given up far sooner.E.g.:
'The boy crumples to his knees with a long "OOOOOOOOH", shitting and pissing in terror. He feels the shit warm between his thighs. A great wave of hot blood swells his lips and throat. His body contracts into a foetal position and sperm spurts hot into his face. The Mugwump dips hot perfumed water from alabaster bowl, pensively washes the boy's ass and cock, drying him with a soft blue towel. A warm wind play over the boy's body and the hairs flat free. The Mugwump put a hand under the boy's chest and pulls him to his feet. Holding him by both pinioned elbows, propels him up the steps and under the noose. He stands in front of the boy holding the noose in both hands.'
Or:
"Darling, I want to rim you," she whispers.
"No. Not now."
"Please, I want to."
"Well, all right. I'll go wash my ass."
"No, I'll wash it."
"Aw shucks now, it ain't dirty."
"Yes it is. Come on now, Johnny boy."
She leads him into the bathroom. "All right, get down." He gets down on his knees and leans forward, with his chin on the bath mat. "Allah," he says. He lookd back and grins at her. She washes his ass with soap and hot water sticking her finger up it.
"Does that hurt?"
"Noooooooooooooo."
Not my thing.
Hopefully the books that I'm currently reading won't be so disappointing: Orlando (1928) by Virginia Woolf, Arguably (2011) by Christoper Hitchens, Bridget Jones' Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding, and The Scar (2002) by China Mieville. So far, I am enjoying them all.
Friday 4 September 2015
'Babel-17' by Samuel R. Delany
A few years ago I read Nova (1968) by Samuel R. Delany, and was thoroughly disappointed. I no longer own my copy, and don't remember the story very well, so I've had to use Wikipedia to jog my memory: in the far future, the galaxy is split between two human factions - Draco and the Pleiades Federation - who compete over the power source Illyrium. To shift the balance of power between the factions, two space captains - Lorq Von Ray with his ragtag band of misfits from the Pleiades, and Prince Red with his corporate crew from Draco - race to the heart of an erupting nova to secure a vast quantity of Illyrium. It's a nautical adventure story... in space!
This is what I remember about Nova:
About halfway through one of the characters drops a massive hint about how the book is going to end, and I felt like Delany was sat next to me, watching me read, elbowing me in the side, saying "Can you guess what I'm going to do at the end? Can you guess? I'm really clever. I doubt you'll guess what I'm going to do. I'm really clever."
"You better not do what I think you're going to do," I thought-spoke to the imaginary Delany.
"I'm really clever. You'll be really impressed with what I'm going to do at the end," imaginary Delany assured me.
I reached the end.
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
Delany had done exactly what I thought he would; I closed the book and stormed off, hoping to vent my frustration on a housemate. Imaginary Delany followed me, poking me in the side, saying, "Did you see what I did there? I'm so clever. I mean, do you now understand what I did earlier? Aren't I really clever? Isn't that a really clever ending? Did you like the little hint I gave you earlier? I'm so clever."
From that first impression of Delany's work, I wasn't too keen on reading more of it, but I'm giving every SF Masterwork a chance: if Martian Time-Slip (1964) had been my first Philip K Dick novel, rather than my eighth, it would've been a terrible first impression of Dick's work. I'm giving Delany two more chances: Babel-17 (1966) and Dhalgren (1975), his two other Masterworks titles. I picked up a charmingly trashy 1978 Ace edition of Babel-17 in Powell's City of Books back in 2013, and have only just got round to reading it.
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| Masterworks Cover |
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| Ace Cover |
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| Ace Blurb |
Babel-17, like Nova, is very much a nautical adventure story... in space!
'The pilot sailed the ship through those currents as sailing ships winded the liquid ocean.'
Wong wanders around the planet's poorer areas to assemble her crew. To find her pilot, she watches a wrestling match. Because:
"In the ship, the pilot's nervous system is connected directly with the controls. The whole hyperstasis transit consists of him literally wrestling the stasis shifts."
Wong & Co travel around, chatting to people, having action sequences, and learning about Babel-17. It's a fast-paced, well-written space adventure with some fun speculation about language. Wikipedia informs me that 'Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis', that language influences thought and perception, is the inspiration for the story:
'The blue room was round and warm and smooth. No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid. If there's no word for it, how do you think about it?'
Babel-17 has a very dramatic impact on thought and perception:
'She didn't "look at the room."
She "something at the something." The first something was a tiny vocable that implied an immediate, but passive, perception that could be aural or olfactory as well as visual. The second something was three equally tiny phonemes that blended at different musical pitches: one an indicator that fixed the size of the chamber at roughly twenty-five feet long and cubical, the second identifying the colour and probable substance of the walls - some blue metal - while the third was... a place holder for particles that should denote the room's function when she discovered it... All four sounds took less time on her tongue and in her mind than the one clumsy diphthong in 'room'. Babel-17; she had felt it before with other languages, the opening, the widening, the mind forced to sudden growth. But this, this was like the sudden focusing of a lens blurry for years.'
It's not a great book; it feels more deserving of the trashy Ace cover than a Masterworks edition, but it is entertaining. The final ~50 pages felt like the anticlimax of a disappointing Doctor Who episode, and the language speculation, while fun, is inconsistent and rather shallow. As dated 60s SF goes, you could do a lot worse (you could also do better). Give it a read if you happen to have a copy lying around, but don't have high expectations.
'The blue room was round and warm and smooth. No way to say warm in French. There was only hot and tepid. If there's no word for it, how do you think about it?'
Babel-17 has a very dramatic impact on thought and perception:
'She didn't "look at the room."
She "something at the something." The first something was a tiny vocable that implied an immediate, but passive, perception that could be aural or olfactory as well as visual. The second something was three equally tiny phonemes that blended at different musical pitches: one an indicator that fixed the size of the chamber at roughly twenty-five feet long and cubical, the second identifying the colour and probable substance of the walls - some blue metal - while the third was... a place holder for particles that should denote the room's function when she discovered it... All four sounds took less time on her tongue and in her mind than the one clumsy diphthong in 'room'. Babel-17; she had felt it before with other languages, the opening, the widening, the mind forced to sudden growth. But this, this was like the sudden focusing of a lens blurry for years.'
It's not a great book; it feels more deserving of the trashy Ace cover than a Masterworks edition, but it is entertaining. The final ~50 pages felt like the anticlimax of a disappointing Doctor Who episode, and the language speculation, while fun, is inconsistent and rather shallow. As dated 60s SF goes, you could do a lot worse (you could also do better). Give it a read if you happen to have a copy lying around, but don't have high expectations.
Monday 24 August 2015
A Ballard Binge
I've read a few J.G. Ballard books recently. Ballard is one of those authors who is not very well known amongst the general public, but is very popular amongst authors and literary peeps. It might help to think of him as the British equivalent to Philip K. Dick. Their books are very weird (although this doesn't tell you very much or prepare you for actually reading them). Ballard's work gave rise to the adjective 'Ballardian'; Dick's work gave rise to the adjective 'Dickian'. Their stories are often about modernity messing with people's heads, but in very different ways. They can both come across as quite pretentious. I'm not sure how much this comparison does either of them justice.
I first decided to read Ballard after Philip Reeve, author of the Mortal Engines series, recommended Ballard's early disaster SF novels while speaking at an event at the University of Nottingham. The three disaster novels are: The Drowned World (1962), about melting polar ice-caps flooding the earth; The Burning World (1964, revised and re-released as The Drought in 1965), about a global water shortage; and The Crystal World (1966), which has a pseudo-scientific explanation worthy of Doctor Who. Time is leaking out of the universe. Matter, once held by time like a saturated solution, is now crystallising across the cosmos. Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey.
These novels, unlike other disaster novels, focus on the psychological states of the characters rather than the outward effects of the catastrophe. The protagonists are mesmerised by the disaster, undergoing a psychological transformation as they explore the changing world, accepting it as the world to come. Ballard makes the catastrophe into a positive change.
These novels, unlike other disaster novels, focus on the psychological states of the characters rather than the outward effects of the catastrophe. The protagonists are mesmerised by the disaster, undergoing a psychological transformation as they explore the changing world, accepting it as the world to come. Ballard makes the catastrophe into a positive change.
I read The Drowned World in 2013, and found it slightly disappointing. It has its moments, but the story - less than 200 pages - felt like it dragged on and on and on, as though Ballard struggled to make it novel length. The Crystal World I read most recently, and similarly found it slightly disappointing and too long. What is most memorable about both of them is the evocative descriptions of the changed world:
'The road narrowed, avoiding the slope which led up to the house, but its annealed crust, blunted like half-fused quartz, offered a more comfortable surface than the crystal teeth of the lawn. Fifty yards ahead, Dr. Sanders came across what was unmistakably a jewelled rowing boat set solidly into the roadway, a chain of lapis lazuli mooring it to the verge. He realised that he was walking along a small tributary of the river, and that a thin stream of water still ran below the crust. This vestigial motion in some way prevented it from erupting into the spur-like forms of the rest of the forest floor.
As he paused by the boat, feeling the crystals along its sides, a huge four-legged creature half-embedded in the surface lurched forward through the crust, the loosened pieces of lattice attached to its snout and shoulders shaking like a transparent cuirass... Invested by the glittering light that poured from its body, the crocodile resembled a fabulous armoured beast. Its blind eyes had been transformed into immense crystalline rubies.'
- The Crystal World, Chapter 6
Slightly put off by my disappointment with The Drowned World, it was quite a while until I attempted another Ballard. At an event at the University of Nottingham, Christopher Priest, author of The Prestige (1995), recommended Ballard's short stories, saying that he found Ballard's novels disappointing. From my experience with Ballard's work so far, I find myself agreeing with Priest. Ballard's short stories are the shit. I picked up the anthology Myths of the Near Future (1982) at Loncon 3, and was surprised at the quality and diversity of its 10 stories.
In the titular story, humanity is suffering from 'space sickness' after space travel is abandoned. In the collapsed society, handfuls of people still dream of space exploration. Some walk around naked flapping their arms, hoping to transform into birds. The protagonist analyses pornographic imagery, thinking that the images of lustful union hide the key to the secrets of the universe:
'That evening he rested in his chair beside the empty pool, watching the video-cassettes of his wife projected on to the wall at the deep end. Somewhere in these intimate conjunctions of flesh and geometry, of memory, tenderness and desire, was a key to the vivid air, to that new time and space which the first astronauts had unwittingly revealed here at Cape Kennedy.'
Other stories from that collection include Having A Wonderful Time, told as a series of postcards from a woman trapped on a cheap holiday resort, and Theatre of War, a script for TV documentary on a twentieth century British civil war, with all the dialogue having been adapted from coverage of the Vietnam war.
The Voices of Time (1984) contains another 8 stories; The Disaster Area (1967) contains another 9. Vermillion Sands (1971) gets its name from the surreal futuristic holiday resort where its 9 stories - featuring cloud-sculptors, singing plants, living clothing, emotional houses, and more - are set.
The Voices of Time (1984) contains another 8 stories; The Disaster Area (1967) contains another 9. Vermillion Sands (1971) gets its name from the surreal futuristic holiday resort where its 9 stories - featuring cloud-sculptors, singing plants, living clothing, emotional houses, and more - are set.
Short story collections are usually hit and miss, but Ballard's misses are at least interesting. His hits are spectacular. Some stories felt rushed. Here are some entertainingly bad sentences from stories that needed a final polish:
'In her face the diagram of bones formed a geometry of murder.'
- The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D, Vermilion Sands
'"Where, my God, where is he? Where is he?"
Shifting his emphasis from the first of these interrogatories to the second, as if to illustrate that the fruitless search for Hinton's whereabouts had been superseded by an examination of his total existential role in the unhappy farce of which he was the author and principle star, Dr Mellinger turned upon his three breakfastless subordinates.'
- Minus One, The Disaster Area
'Talking to her was like walking across a floor composed of blocks of varying heights, an analogy reinforced by the squares of the terrace, into which her presence had let another random dimension.'
- The Screen Game, Vermilion Sands
These add a bit of comic relief. When the main negative to the anthologies is a few bad sentences, that's got to be a good sign. At some point it would have been cheaper for me to splash out on The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard, but I didn't think I'd want to read that many. Having read four anthologies, I find myself still wanting to read the remaining six: War Fever (1990), The Venus Hunters (1980), Low-Flying Aircraft (1976), The Atrocity Exhibition (1969), The Day of Forever (1967), and The Terminal Beach (1964). I'm taking a break from Ballard so won't be reading those until next year at the earliest.
'Leaving the church, I threw the semen on to the cobbled pathway outside the vestry door. As I paused there, looking across the swimming pool at the replica aircraft in the grounds of the film studios, green-fluted plants with milk-red blossoms sprang through the stones at my feet. I stepped among them and set off towards the town, my swollen penis in my hand. As I ran through the trees I thought of Miriam. Again I ejaculated beside the tennis courts, and hurled my semen across the flower-beds.'
- The Unlimited Dream Company, Chapter 22
Of the Ballard books I've read, I highly recommend Concrete Island and all the short story collections. To a lesser degree, I also recommend The Crystal World. Despite my general dissatisfaction with his novels, I'm still tempted to read a few more of them. Those that most interest me are: Crash (1973), High Rise (1975), Empire of the Sun (1984), and The Kindness of Women (1991). I already own copies of Hello America (1981) and Rushing To Paradise (1994), so may as well give them a go too. However, I won't be reading those until next year at the earliest, because I'm having a Ballard break.
Saturday 25 July 2015
'Downward To The Earth' by Robert Silverberg
'Downward To The Earth' (DTTE) is an SF novel about post-colonial guilt, a tribute to Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad. It is the third Robert Silverberg novel I have read, the others being 'The Book of Skulls' and 'Dying Inside'. Edmund Gunderson, a former colonial administrator, returns to the planet he once administered, seeking redemption for sins committed during the days of Earth's imperialism.
The title comes from the Bible: 'Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?' (Ecclesiastes 3:21). During his colonial days, Gunderson considered the planet's natives - the Nildoror, who look like green elephants with three tusks, and the Sulidoror, who look like tall furry humans with claws and snouts - mere beasts. Earth relinquished the planet after discovering that the natives were sentient. Because of the natives' appearance, many humans - including Gunderson - still struggle to overcome their prejudice. Gunderson wants to take part in the Nildoror's sacred religious ceremony of rebirth, hoping to gain forgiveness from them and from himself.
'Thus we refresh our souls by undertaking new lives... To undergo rebirth is to enter a new world, not merely a new life.'
DTTE is a gripping read. The travel across the alien world is engaging and convincingly detailed. There's a good bit of SF mysticism, which I'm very fond of: I have, in the past, found SF imagery conducive to transformative religious experiences. At times I was reminded of my own travels (on Earth, not an alien world); Silverberg got the idea for the novel while travelling in Tanzania. On my travels I was generally very lucky with the people I met. Only a few times did I meet the hideously vacuous tourists personified by Matt Lacey's Gap Yah character. I expect Silverberg met some on his travels:
'The tourists were, in fact, the last species whatever that Gunderson wanted to see at this point. He would have preferred locusts, scorpions, fanged serpents, tyrannosaurs, toads, anything at all. Here he was coming from some sort of mystical experience with the nildoror, the nature of which he barely understood; here, insulated from his own kind, he rode toward the land of rebirth struggling with basic questions of right and wrong, of the nature of intelligence, of the relationship of human to nonhuman and of himself to his own past; only a few moments before he had been forced into an uncomfortable, even painful confrontation with that past by Srin'gahar's casual, artful questions about the souls of elephants; and abruptly Gunderson found himself once more among these empty trivial human beings, these archetypes of the ignorant and the blind tourist, and whatever individuality he had earned in the eyes of his nildor companion vanished instantly as he dropped back into the undifferentiated class of Earthmen.'
I recommend 'Downward To The Earth'. It's a very good read, but it didn't blow my mind. Compared to the other Silverbergs I've read, this one is middling quality:
'The Book of Skulls' is the best of the three. Four American frat boys go on a road trip to find a weird skull-worshipping cult that may or may not exist, and who may or may not hold the secret to immortality. Silverberg manages to make this boring premise very gripping, as the four narrators explore their friendships and aspirations while pondering over mortality.
'Dying Inside' is the worst of the three, though still a very good book. It's the autobiography of David Sellig, a telepath who discovers that he is losing his powers. There's not much of a plot; Sellig tells his life story in a non-linear way, writing about whatever happens to be on his mind. It is a very emotional and intimate book about an alienated lonely loser who has not made much of his life, despite his powers, and realises that he is dying. The story is let down by chapters dedicated to Sellig's 'job': he ekes out a living writing essays for cheating university students. Some of these essays are recited word for word, and they are very boring.
Friday 24 July 2015
The Predator, The Cyclist, and The Prophet
Three characters from today's walk.
1) I was walking down Market Street, whichw as crowded with shoppers. He was walking towards me with a steady, deliberate gait, like a predator hoping not to startle its prey. He wore a plain hoody. His skin was pale, his hair short and brown. His eyes stared forward, unblinking, while his face betrayed nothing. The gait and the face gave the impression that there was so much rage and hate and murderous lust inside him that his facial expression system had been overloaded and broken, leaving him with the expressionless face of a Passport photo or mug shot. As I walked past him, perhaps less than a meter away, a dreadful shiver went down my spine. I wanted to flee. I have never felt that before from such a brief encounter. It was as though all the hate and rage and murderous lust was, after breaking his facial muscles, being exuded from his pores, creating a terrifying aura around him.
I hope all this was just my imagination; I hope we won't be seeing his face on the news soon, wanted for multiple counts of murder and mutilation.
2) A man rode past me on a bike, on the pavement. He was wearing a grey tracksuit. He rode fast: he needed to get somewhere, or away from somewhere, very quickly. Tattooed across the left side of his neck were the large letters 'MUM'. The letters' prominence and crudity reminded me of cattle branding: was this man in such a hurry because he had just escaped from the chav farm?
3) On his back a cardboard sign advertised 'THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO THE END OF THE WORLD'; on his front, a similar sign advised 'OBEY GOD'S 4TH COMMANDMENT OR YOU WILL DIE'. Held above his head, was the largest of his signs: 'ALMOST THERE'. He wore a scruffy coat; he was not clean-shaven.
He held out leaflets in his arms. I approached him and collected one. Title: 'THE END OF THE WORLD IS VERY CLOSE NOW'. The man didn't, or couldn't, speak. He showed me another sign: 'WOULD YOU LIKE SOME FREE BOOKS THAT EXPLAIN IT ALL?'. I nodded. The silent preacher-prophet passed me them from his sign-covered trolley. The 'books' are homemade: printed A4 pages stapled together. Title: 'THE HOPE THAT WE HAVE IN JESUS AS THIS WORLD COMES TO AN END', parts 1, 2, and 4. No part 3 for me.
I returned home. Here are some excerpts from the leaflet:
'Something very very big is about to happen to the world towards the end of 2015... Pope Francis has referred to himself as Jesus 2. He has gained territory in Jerusalem in preparation for the supposed joint Jew-Christisn-Islamic rebuilding of the (Satanic) 3rd temple... Is Pope Francis a demon, and the last Pope ever?... The world has been gradually prepared for the arrival of Maitreya for 40 years... Maitreya/Satan says that the start of the rapid change from the old system to the wonderful new system will start towards the end of this year, and that he will appear in person for the 1st time very soon.'
According to Wikipedia, Maitreya is a future incarnation of the Buddha.
'You have been given a temporary body for around 600,000 hours, and we have been put on this world for no other reason than to see if you decide to obey the laws and commandments of the God who created you and put you here. The only purpose for your existence on this planet is to decide the destination for your soul.'
Such a nightmarish idea. Worse than nihilism.
'The world is full of IDIOTIC MORONS WITH A DEATH WISH, and BLIND IGNORANT LOSERS THAT CAN'T SEE WHAT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM... Today's SLEEP WALKING SHEEPLE fall for all their deceptions, and they can't see that they are living in a world where the satanic authorities regard us as useless eaters that have to be destroyed... Those suffering from A TERMINAL DAFTNESS really do think it is rational to spread Satan's anti biblical propaganda, and people like Stephen Hawkins, Richard Dawkins, David Attenborough and Brian Cox really do believe the rubbish they are peddling to the masses via the TV box. Are you one of the BLIND TERMINAL REJECTS IN THE GAME OF LIFE that believes all of their anti-God propaganda?... Life is a continual battle against evil forces. If we win the battle... we find ourselves in God's world of AWESOMENESS BEYOND OUR IMAGINATION.'
I like the phrase 'a terminal daftness'.
'Have you ever wondered how MAGICIANS defy gravity, cut up their bodies, read people's minds and make things appear and disappear? The magicians have pledged allegiance of their soul to Satan in return for the ability to do party tricks that astound the UNWASHED MASSES THAT CAN'T SEE BEYOND THIS WORLD... Today's DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY is entirely supernatural. Many people in the gadget industries do know that it is mostly SATANIC WITCHCRAFT, and anyone that isn't living in Satan's dark world, and ON THEIR WAY TO LIFE'S GARBAGE HEAP should be able to see that it is beyond the range of what is physically possible... Even the printer that printed most of these books and leaflets is blindingly obviously not of this world... What will you do when the demons that appear to be aliens arrive?'
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, demons are used in technology such as watches and cameras. There's a novel by Arthur C. Clarke featuring aliens that look like demons.
The books are too long, and not as entertainingly angry. In them, we learn that supermarkets are part of Satan's plan to make the human population unfit and unhealthy; that medication is evil; that evolution is a satanic lie; that 'the coloured races are expanding, while the white races are diminishing'; that hygiene is evil; that Hitler was the victim of an incredibly successful satanic propaganda campaign; that feminism is evil; that the Devil monitors the internet; that Islam was a Roman Catholic invention.
And that only brings me about halfway through part 1.
That poor man.
1) I was walking down Market Street, whichw as crowded with shoppers. He was walking towards me with a steady, deliberate gait, like a predator hoping not to startle its prey. He wore a plain hoody. His skin was pale, his hair short and brown. His eyes stared forward, unblinking, while his face betrayed nothing. The gait and the face gave the impression that there was so much rage and hate and murderous lust inside him that his facial expression system had been overloaded and broken, leaving him with the expressionless face of a Passport photo or mug shot. As I walked past him, perhaps less than a meter away, a dreadful shiver went down my spine. I wanted to flee. I have never felt that before from such a brief encounter. It was as though all the hate and rage and murderous lust was, after breaking his facial muscles, being exuded from his pores, creating a terrifying aura around him.
I hope all this was just my imagination; I hope we won't be seeing his face on the news soon, wanted for multiple counts of murder and mutilation.
2) A man rode past me on a bike, on the pavement. He was wearing a grey tracksuit. He rode fast: he needed to get somewhere, or away from somewhere, very quickly. Tattooed across the left side of his neck were the large letters 'MUM'. The letters' prominence and crudity reminded me of cattle branding: was this man in such a hurry because he had just escaped from the chav farm?
3) On his back a cardboard sign advertised 'THE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO THE END OF THE WORLD'; on his front, a similar sign advised 'OBEY GOD'S 4TH COMMANDMENT OR YOU WILL DIE'. Held above his head, was the largest of his signs: 'ALMOST THERE'. He wore a scruffy coat; he was not clean-shaven.
He held out leaflets in his arms. I approached him and collected one. Title: 'THE END OF THE WORLD IS VERY CLOSE NOW'. The man didn't, or couldn't, speak. He showed me another sign: 'WOULD YOU LIKE SOME FREE BOOKS THAT EXPLAIN IT ALL?'. I nodded. The silent preacher-prophet passed me them from his sign-covered trolley. The 'books' are homemade: printed A4 pages stapled together. Title: 'THE HOPE THAT WE HAVE IN JESUS AS THIS WORLD COMES TO AN END', parts 1, 2, and 4. No part 3 for me.
I returned home. Here are some excerpts from the leaflet:
'Something very very big is about to happen to the world towards the end of 2015... Pope Francis has referred to himself as Jesus 2. He has gained territory in Jerusalem in preparation for the supposed joint Jew-Christisn-Islamic rebuilding of the (Satanic) 3rd temple... Is Pope Francis a demon, and the last Pope ever?... The world has been gradually prepared for the arrival of Maitreya for 40 years... Maitreya/Satan says that the start of the rapid change from the old system to the wonderful new system will start towards the end of this year, and that he will appear in person for the 1st time very soon.'
According to Wikipedia, Maitreya is a future incarnation of the Buddha.
'You have been given a temporary body for around 600,000 hours, and we have been put on this world for no other reason than to see if you decide to obey the laws and commandments of the God who created you and put you here. The only purpose for your existence on this planet is to decide the destination for your soul.'
Such a nightmarish idea. Worse than nihilism.
'The world is full of IDIOTIC MORONS WITH A DEATH WISH, and BLIND IGNORANT LOSERS THAT CAN'T SEE WHAT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM... Today's SLEEP WALKING SHEEPLE fall for all their deceptions, and they can't see that they are living in a world where the satanic authorities regard us as useless eaters that have to be destroyed... Those suffering from A TERMINAL DAFTNESS really do think it is rational to spread Satan's anti biblical propaganda, and people like Stephen Hawkins, Richard Dawkins, David Attenborough and Brian Cox really do believe the rubbish they are peddling to the masses via the TV box. Are you one of the BLIND TERMINAL REJECTS IN THE GAME OF LIFE that believes all of their anti-God propaganda?... Life is a continual battle against evil forces. If we win the battle... we find ourselves in God's world of AWESOMENESS BEYOND OUR IMAGINATION.'
I like the phrase 'a terminal daftness'.
'Have you ever wondered how MAGICIANS defy gravity, cut up their bodies, read people's minds and make things appear and disappear? The magicians have pledged allegiance of their soul to Satan in return for the ability to do party tricks that astound the UNWASHED MASSES THAT CAN'T SEE BEYOND THIS WORLD... Today's DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY is entirely supernatural. Many people in the gadget industries do know that it is mostly SATANIC WITCHCRAFT, and anyone that isn't living in Satan's dark world, and ON THEIR WAY TO LIFE'S GARBAGE HEAP should be able to see that it is beyond the range of what is physically possible... Even the printer that printed most of these books and leaflets is blindingly obviously not of this world... What will you do when the demons that appear to be aliens arrive?'
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, demons are used in technology such as watches and cameras. There's a novel by Arthur C. Clarke featuring aliens that look like demons.
The books are too long, and not as entertainingly angry. In them, we learn that supermarkets are part of Satan's plan to make the human population unfit and unhealthy; that medication is evil; that evolution is a satanic lie; that 'the coloured races are expanding, while the white races are diminishing'; that hygiene is evil; that Hitler was the victim of an incredibly successful satanic propaganda campaign; that feminism is evil; that the Devil monitors the internet; that Islam was a Roman Catholic invention.
And that only brings me about halfway through part 1.
That poor man.
Wednesday 15 July 2015
'Stand On Zanzibar' by John Brunner
'Stand on Zanzibar' (SoZ) is one of those SF novels with an awful lot of hype around it. I really wanted to like it. I really wanted it to blow my mind.
First published in 1968, SoZ gives us a detailed picture of the dystopian future world... of 2010. Earth's population has reached over 7 billion. Cannabis is legal, but tobacco is illegal. Most countries have eugenics legislation. There is greater acceptance of the LGBT community.
To give us a broad view of this dystopian world, SoZ has four categories of chapters: 'Continuity', which tells the main storyline; 'Tracking With Closeups', which give insights into the lives of minor characters; 'The Happening World', which give samples of conversation, news headlines, announcements, facts, etc; and 'Context', which gives detailed background information.
SoZ is certainly impressive in its ambitious scope, but I found it disappointingly dated and dull.
There is a lot of irritating fake slang: 'codder', 'shiggy', 'sheeting', 'whatinole', 'dreck', etc. The only female characters are either sex objects or a sinister elderly businesswoman. 'The Happening World' chapters often felt like printouts of Facebook news feeds: occasionally there is something interesting, often it's drivel. The main plot advances extremely slowly, and features uninteresting characters.
At the halfway point I was resolved to give up, but the main plot interested me just enough that I genuinely wanted to know what happened. I failed to find an online summary to save me the effort. I decided to persevere, skipping many of the 'Context', 'Tracking With Closeups', and 'The Happening World' chapters, and only skimming the 'Continuity' chapters to get it over with quickly. It wasn't worth it.
SoZ gave me greater certainty that our present reality is a dystopian future, a more interesting dystopian future than the one presented in this 'masterwork' from 1968. Read SoZ if you're interested in the history of science fiction, but if you want a detailed picture of a dystopian world, you'd be better off reading the news, National Geographic, or New Scientist, and occasionally scrolling through Facebook or Twitter.
First published in 1968, SoZ gives us a detailed picture of the dystopian future world... of 2010. Earth's population has reached over 7 billion. Cannabis is legal, but tobacco is illegal. Most countries have eugenics legislation. There is greater acceptance of the LGBT community.
To give us a broad view of this dystopian world, SoZ has four categories of chapters: 'Continuity', which tells the main storyline; 'Tracking With Closeups', which give insights into the lives of minor characters; 'The Happening World', which give samples of conversation, news headlines, announcements, facts, etc; and 'Context', which gives detailed background information.
SoZ is certainly impressive in its ambitious scope, but I found it disappointingly dated and dull.
There is a lot of irritating fake slang: 'codder', 'shiggy', 'sheeting', 'whatinole', 'dreck', etc. The only female characters are either sex objects or a sinister elderly businesswoman. 'The Happening World' chapters often felt like printouts of Facebook news feeds: occasionally there is something interesting, often it's drivel. The main plot advances extremely slowly, and features uninteresting characters.
At the halfway point I was resolved to give up, but the main plot interested me just enough that I genuinely wanted to know what happened. I failed to find an online summary to save me the effort. I decided to persevere, skipping many of the 'Context', 'Tracking With Closeups', and 'The Happening World' chapters, and only skimming the 'Continuity' chapters to get it over with quickly. It wasn't worth it.
SoZ gave me greater certainty that our present reality is a dystopian future, a more interesting dystopian future than the one presented in this 'masterwork' from 1968. Read SoZ if you're interested in the history of science fiction, but if you want a detailed picture of a dystopian world, you'd be better off reading the news, National Geographic, or New Scientist, and occasionally scrolling through Facebook or Twitter.
Sunday 21 June 2015
Don't Vote UKIP
(I originally wrote this on my personal Facebook wall in the run up to the 2014 European Parliament elections.)
I am worried about UKIP's popularity. I am worried that people are actually going to vote for them. I've thought for awhile that voting for UKIP was a bad idea, but was also aware of my own ignorance of the situation. I thought that there might be something other than lie-filled propaganda fuelling their popularity.
Not any more. I am now absolutely certain that voting UKIP is a really, really bad idea.
UKIP's MEPs have a track record of not turning up to work, and not voting in Britain's interests, despite being paid £60,000 per year to do so. Voting for UKIP is a vote for lazy, apathetic workers who don't turn up. The sort of workers who would get sacked very quickly. As an MEP, they can't get Britain out of the EU, and they don't even bother to make the EU better for Britain, presumably so they have more to complain about in their propaganda.
The EU allows us to travel, to study, to work, to settle anywhere within it. A lot of British people do this. EU immigration works both ways. Importing and exporting is made a lot easier. We are a country reliant on imports. Britain's position in the EU is better than that of many EU countries. We've kept the pound; we have greater control over our economy. We are one of the strongest countries within it. The benefits of EU membership vastly outweigh its costs. It is in Britain's interest to stay in the EU; it is in the EU's interest to keep us in it.
Sure, our position could be improved, and its the job of competent (i.e. not UKIP) MEP's to sort that out. MEPs that turn up to work.
UKIP clearly have their own sinister agenda. Their propaganda presents the idea of leaving an internationally agreed human rights convention as a good thing. WHO READS THAT WITHOUT ALARMS GOING OFF? Who reads that and thinks 'Too right; I don't want my government accountable for human rights abuses'? They focus on the right of prisoners to vote, and suggest that this is an awful thing, presumably hoping for an emotional reaction to the idea that murderers and rapists can vote. The right of prisoners to vote is a safeguard against political oppression. Take it away and a government can imprison its opponents and stay in power. Take it away and we could become a dictatorship very quickly. We might get angry at the idea of a murderer being able to vote, but I'd rather that than live under a dictatorship. It might be a fairly ineffectual safeguard, but I can see why it's there.
I'm worried about the rise of UKIP. I really hope it's just a phase.
I don't align myself with any political party; I don't know who I'll be voting for on 22nd May, only that it won't be UKIP or BNP.
After having wandered round a decent chunk of the world, I now get annoyed at the idea of not voting when we live in a country where we can actually change who makes the decisions. We might not be particularly fond of any of them, but we can choose the ones that we think are least shit.
Laos is a 'democratic republic' with one political party. And a midnight curfew.
Use your vote.
And for fuck's sake, don't vote UKIP.
I am worried about UKIP's popularity. I am worried that people are actually going to vote for them. I've thought for awhile that voting for UKIP was a bad idea, but was also aware of my own ignorance of the situation. I thought that there might be something other than lie-filled propaganda fuelling their popularity.
Not any more. I am now absolutely certain that voting UKIP is a really, really bad idea.
UKIP's MEPs have a track record of not turning up to work, and not voting in Britain's interests, despite being paid £60,000 per year to do so. Voting for UKIP is a vote for lazy, apathetic workers who don't turn up. The sort of workers who would get sacked very quickly. As an MEP, they can't get Britain out of the EU, and they don't even bother to make the EU better for Britain, presumably so they have more to complain about in their propaganda.
The EU allows us to travel, to study, to work, to settle anywhere within it. A lot of British people do this. EU immigration works both ways. Importing and exporting is made a lot easier. We are a country reliant on imports. Britain's position in the EU is better than that of many EU countries. We've kept the pound; we have greater control over our economy. We are one of the strongest countries within it. The benefits of EU membership vastly outweigh its costs. It is in Britain's interest to stay in the EU; it is in the EU's interest to keep us in it.
Sure, our position could be improved, and its the job of competent (i.e. not UKIP) MEP's to sort that out. MEPs that turn up to work.
UKIP clearly have their own sinister agenda. Their propaganda presents the idea of leaving an internationally agreed human rights convention as a good thing. WHO READS THAT WITHOUT ALARMS GOING OFF? Who reads that and thinks 'Too right; I don't want my government accountable for human rights abuses'? They focus on the right of prisoners to vote, and suggest that this is an awful thing, presumably hoping for an emotional reaction to the idea that murderers and rapists can vote. The right of prisoners to vote is a safeguard against political oppression. Take it away and a government can imprison its opponents and stay in power. Take it away and we could become a dictatorship very quickly. We might get angry at the idea of a murderer being able to vote, but I'd rather that than live under a dictatorship. It might be a fairly ineffectual safeguard, but I can see why it's there.
I'm worried about the rise of UKIP. I really hope it's just a phase.
I don't align myself with any political party; I don't know who I'll be voting for on 22nd May, only that it won't be UKIP or BNP.
After having wandered round a decent chunk of the world, I now get annoyed at the idea of not voting when we live in a country where we can actually change who makes the decisions. We might not be particularly fond of any of them, but we can choose the ones that we think are least shit.
Laos is a 'democratic republic' with one political party. And a midnight curfew.
Use your vote.
And for fuck's sake, don't vote UKIP.
Friday 19 June 2015
'Riddley Walker' by Russell Hoban
I have read a lot of science fiction, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to find science fiction novels that wow me like the genre once did. For the past few weeks I have been enjoying 'Riddley Walker' by Russell Hoban, which is the best SF novel I have read since February last year*. It has taken so long to read because the whole book is written in a made up version of English.
'How cud any 1 not want to get that shyning Power back from time back way back? How cud any 1 not want to be like them what had boats in the air and picters in the wind? How cud any 1 not want to see them shyning weals terning?'
Riddley Walker, the novel's eponymous narrator, lives an unspecified length of time in the future in post-apocalyptic Kent, where technology has regressed to Iron Age levels. Riddley tells us his story, records some of his people's folklore, and provides a copy of the one ancient text shared by the various tribes: 'The Eusa Story', which tells of how Eusa, with the aid of Mr Clevver, shrunk himself down and found a little man called Addom, who he accidentally split in half while interrogating to discover the secrets of the universe. 'The Eusa Story' is written in a more archaic dialect of fictional post-apocalyptic English:
'Owt uv that 2 peaces uv the Littl Shynin Man the Addom thayr cum shyningness in wayvs in spredin circels. Wivverin & wayverin & humin with a hy soun. Lytin up the dark wud... Bad Tym it wuz then. Peapl din no if they wud be alyv 1 day to the nex. Din even no if thayd be alyv 1 min tu the nex. Sum stuk tu gether sum din. Sum tyms thay dru lots. Sum got et so uthers cud liv. Cudn be shur of nuthing din no wut wuz sayf tu eat or drink & tryin tu keep wyd uv uther forajers & dogs it wuz nuthing onle Luck if enne 1 stayd alyv.'
'Riddley Walker' was first published in 1980, so it pre-dates textspeak and the internet. Perhaps the last few decades, with their lols and m8s and rofls, have detracted from the inventiveness of Hoban's Riddleyspeak. I think it shows that Hoban was extremely prescient: we have already seen English head in Riddley's direction. Hoban says in the afterword: 'Riddleyspeak is only a breaking down and twisting of standard English, so the reader who sounds out the words and uses a little imagination ought to be able to understand it. Technically it works well with the story because it slows the reader down to Riddley's rate of comprehension.' By forcing you to read it slowly, as you decipher the language, 'Riddley Walker' draws you into its world far more than the average post-apocalypse novel. Riddley's world seems hideously plausible.
'I said, 'You cunt.'
He said, 'Funny what peopl wil use for a hard word. The name of a pleasur thing and a place where new life comes out of. There ben times nor not too far back nyther when they use to offer to that same and very 1 what has her woom in Cambry. That same very Nite and Death we all come out of.'
I said, 'Dont you push words at me you rat cunt.''
Many of the words and phrases have double meanings: one of my favourite examples is 'sarvering gallack seas' for 'sovereign galaxies', but the tribespeople of Riddley's world imagine vast sky-seas, crossable on sky-ships, which are severing ('sarvering') them from the humans on other planets. The novel is highly regarded amongst People Who Read Lots.Will Self wrote the introduction to my edition, and David Mitchell wrote an appreciation in the Guardian. 'Riddley Walker' more than repays the effort spent in reading it. Read it. Read it. Read it.
*I read Karel Capek's 'War with the Newts' in February last year. It's a brilliantly bleak satire on colonialism, fascism and racism, made all the more bleak by the events that occurred after the novel's publication in 1936. ('War with the Newts' pokes fun at the Nazis for not liking Jews and being obsessed with racial superiority.) Capek stands next to Franz Kafka as one of the giants of twentieth century Czech literature.
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