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Astral Avenue 09
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ASTRAL AVENUE
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July 1987 No. 9
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
We're in a quandary. We know a surefire way to make a heap of cash,
but are lacking a certain element of success.
What we're talking about is writing the screenplay for the
inevitable movie of the Iran-Contra affair. Now, right now, before some
Hollywood hack beats us to the punch.
First, we need a title. Can't sell a movie without a socko title.
And we bogged down at CITIZEN SECORD.
Second, we have to have some Superstars lined up to convince the
studio of the commercial potential of this dog. One again, our imagination
supplies Jonathan Winters as Ed Meese, but rolls over and plays dead from
then on.
Can't you help us with your suggestions?
C'mon! We've even bought our tux for Oscar Nite.
DEPARTMENT OF AMPLIFICATIONS
Some of you probably wondered who I was referring to in the last
issue when I said: "Gibson's or Watkins' worlds." In my haste, I confused
two names: Walter Jon Williams and William Jon Watkins. Obviously, Williams
was intended. That's "Williams" as in surname. Don't know how I could have
mixed up two such dissimilar names anyway. Please forgive me for confusing
two such stellar luminaries of our pocket universe.
This is not the only time I've done such a thing. When I was about
eight or nine, I kept getting "retinal" and "rectal" mixed up in my mind.
(Luckily, I never had occasion to use the words in conversation.) Oh, I knew
the two different meanings -- I just couldn't remember which word meant
which.
Now, this was about the time when I discovered SF. In this period,
"retinal scanners" were a big buzzword. (Ah, whatever happened to good ol'
"retinal scanners?" They were the cyberdecks of their day once....) You can
imagine the vivid mental image conjured up by this phrase in my dyslexic
mind. I always wondered why authors never mentioned the characters dropping
trousers before getting their security check....
It seems I might have assembled the last issue, number 8, a little
too promiscuously, since I have received empty mailing wrappers back from the
PO. If anyone hasn't received their copy yet -- and more importantly, even
wants it -- please let me know.
MACHIAVELLIAN LESBIANS OF OZ
Seems to me I recently read that THE WIZARD OF OZ has been placed by
some backwoods school committee on a list of proscribed books, as being
detrimental to children.
All I can say is: "It's about time."
I'm sure you want to know my reasons.
First off, I was thumbing through the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW one
Sunday when they were running one of their special Author Symposiums. The
question this time was something like, "What book had the biggest effect on
you and your career."
Guess what Judith Krantz's answer was?
Yup. THE WIZARD OF OZ. She claimes it started her on her career
when she was just a liddle tyke.
Now, if banning THE WIZ will lead to the future prevention of just a
single Judith Krantz, I, for one, am willing to chuck the whole First
Amendment, and throw in the entire ACLU.
But this is not my primary reason for wanting to get THE WIZARD OF
OZ off the shelves of our schools, and onto the Vatican Index. I'm afraid
that Judith Krantzes will always spontaneously generate, even without this
book. No, what I'm really concerned about is the effect of Baum's book on
the whole moral fabric of our society.
When was THE WIZARD OF OZ published? 1900. When did our
civilization start to go to hell on a poetry-cart? 1900. I don't think the
connection can be made much clearer than that.
What exactly is it, you ask, about THE WIZ that makes it have such a
pernicious effect on the moral character of our citizens? To answer that
question, we have to consider not just the initial book, but the whole
successful, still-in-print series by Baum. (And DEL REY BOOKS has a lot to
answer for, keeping this morally bankrupt mind-rot alive under the guise of
publishing only "gee-whiz," uplifting stuff.)
First off, Oz is elitist. It's described as an earthly paradise
where no one has to work, to which only the select few are granted admission.
Here we have a denial of the proletariat, the source of all fat-cat wealth,
one of the dominant motifs of our century. Oz equals Palm Beach.
Second, the place is a monarchy. A sham monarchy to be sure, as
we'll see in a minute, but still ostensibly a government ruled by one person,
the "benificent" Ozma, and her cabinet. What kind of faith does than breed
in the precious flower of democracy? If paradise is a monarchy, why bother
to vote for old Senator Blowhard in the next election?
Try graphing the decline in voter participation against the copies
of OZ books sold. You'll get a big surprise. (I sure did.)
Thirdly, the place is constantly at war! What better paradigm for
our strife-torn century than OZ? "Nomes" to the left of us, "Hammerheads" to
the right, can't let down your guard for a minute, pump up that
military-industrial complex, boys, no sacrifice is too great.
Let's turn now to the question of what kind of people inhabit the
upper echelons of Oz, and serve as examples of behavior to our
impressionistic youth.
First, there's Ozma, a sex-change deviate. Spent most of her life
as a boy, before being turned into a perpetually young girl. (This place is
a paradise all right -- for pedophiles! It's swarming with Lolitas.) She is
said to be kind and generous, but is really subject to imperial whims and
fits of pique. Countered a Nome invasion by wiping out the memories of the
invaders. (Shades of 1984, a prefiguration of the mind-control that is
another thread in the rotten tapestry of our century.)
I don't propose to dissect the vanity and capriciousness of the
lesser residents of Oz; I think these qualities stand out plainly enough.
What I would like to comment on is the insidious puppet-master behind the
whole charade.
Glinda the "Good."
Glinda lives in a palace attended by hundreds of nubile girls
drafted from all the willing (or unwilling?) maidens of Oz. She is
constantly to be seen fondling and kissing these girls, as are Dorothy and
Ozma, whenever they visit. (Thank God Baum had the decency to draw the
curtains on what these wild petting sessions led to!) It is frequently
stated that Glinda is Ozma's servant. Yet events belie this. Glinda is
constantly saving Ozma's tail from one dire predicament or another. She
issues orders, draws up strategies, supplies direction. Glinda, behind her
mask of servility and obedience, actually runs the whole show. Ozma is her
mouthpiece, her figurehead, just as Ronal Reagan is Nancy's.
What appalling cynicism, what corruption! A monarchy would be bad
enough, but this transcends such models, and sinks into Byzantine or
Florentine duplicity.
And how could the relative positions of Ozma and Glinda be
otherwise, considering Glinda's superior knowledge, as embodied in her Book
of Records? Here we can clearly see the outlines of the most important
feature of our age, the power conferred by information.
Glinda's book, you'll recall, is like Borges' Book of Sand, the
script continually changing, recording everything that happens in Oz and the
world. Everything. What people ate, what they did one millisecond after
they did it, where they are, where they're going. Try to imagine the amount
of writing in this book. Talk about the information explosion! Yet Glinda
is abole to read and absord everything in it, able to find jut the tidbit of
knowledge she needs to complete here Machiavellian schemes. What a metaphor
for the all-knowing state, which governs its citizens absolutely through
complete awareness of their every move.
In conjunction with Ozma's all-seeing magic picture (closed-circuit
TV surveillance?), Glinda's book insures that the domination of Oz's
inhabitants is complete. "A boot stepping on a human face for all
eternity...."
And they call this kid's
stuff....
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
READER: Do not throw this paper away. Read it carefully and thoughtfully.
Though you may not be aware of it, YOUR SOUL is in great danger.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MANY LETTERS, NO REPLIES
Dear Mr. di Philipo (sir):
Thanx for running my pub-shot in your great mag! Do you run FICTION?
My first story "Barking Chrome," was almost accepted by NEW PATHWAYS! And
I'll be in MIRRORSHADES IV: BEYOND THUNDERDOME!
Viva the Revolution, FLUFFY the
CYBERPUP Kenosha, Wis.
From JAMES BLAYLOCK: The last issue (number 7) had some great stuff in it.
From MICHAEL COBLEY: While your ITGO article was fascinating, it didn't go
deep enough, I thought. You talked a lot about whether or not the cyberpunk
of Gibson is today-writ-large, and hovered around the "Is it or is it not SF
prediction?" question without actually asking it. The SF-as-prediction
schtick has been done to death in any number of brain-rot newspapers, yet it
is the paradigm that still weighs down the genre with a stifling accumulation
of archaic media templates. Far more valuable (and liberating) is the idea
of SF-as-theory, which in my view is what Gibson and Sterling et al have been
doing all along.
From GREGORY BENFORD: Talk in AA about whether smalltime magazines are
useful to the field: sure, BUT... not very often. It's certainly true that
some fiction that's experimental gets into them, and some of the experiments
work, but my impression of most cases is that they cling to the conventional
middle much of the time -- or maybe their contributors do.
From WILUM PUGMIRE: For a professional writer and editor to say that non-pro
publications shouldn't publish fiction by amateurs is absurd. I write
entirely for small press horror zines, it is my choice to do so. I am not
impress'd with professional horror magazines, and I'm not interested in
appearing therein. I wouldn't care if all professional publishers vanish'd,
leaving only amateurs. Of cours, I've no interest in turning writing into a
profession, so my outlook is weird.
Rudy Rucker... must not venture too often into ye 12" single section
of record shops, else he would know that disco did not "fade," but is the
current trend in pop music.
From BRUCE STERLING: Re: your recent AA thing on ITGO. Wise up, man. The
reason a "stifling of individual perception" is "crystallizing like amber"
around Gibson is because a lot of lazy-ass writers are deliberately ripping
him off. It's a matter of commerce, not imagination -- it's more convenient
for them to rip Gibson than think. It has nothing to do with your ridiculous
notion that there's only one probable future. Nor are there "only so many
sources," a laughably smug assertion that only shows you are sleepwalking
through as blinding buzzing confusion of potential extrapolative input.
Your entire ITGO piece is a transparent attempt to ideologically
justify your own science-fantasies, like "Skintwister," which would have us
believe that Filipino (Di Filipino?) psychic surgery is, like, for real, man.
The premise of "Skintwister" is harebrained, but it kicks ass, so it's okay
-- nobody's watching, relax. I don't much believe in Gibsonian AI voodoo
gods, either.
Your real problem is that you waste time studying hokey SF genre
structure instead of the actual living breathing structure of the
contemporary world. Start doing this, seriously this time, and a lot of
these acronymic "story types" and "subgenres" will shrink to their true level
of writerly importance, which is miniscule.
From IGOR TOLOCONNICOV: Boris Zavgorodny showed me AA of yours. A curious
work, to say the least. The thing which I sadly lack on outside but greatly
appreciate is much satirical bend of mind. Sterling expired in a new family
transition, and there is a gap in modern contemporary chit-chat zines for me.
Try not to waver under pressure.
From MARC LAIDLAW: Rudy Rucker points out the great title of Ike's
autobiography, but I don't suppose anyone tops Reagan's title: WHERE IS THE
REST OF ME? One pictures a lobotomized schizophrenic wandering down the
dimlit corridors of power, searching for his evil twin.
From ANDREW MC QUIDDY: (AA offers) frank, innovative, and often insightful
essays that are a joy to read, and are both intellectually and ideologically
stimulating. The recent montage column by Rudy was particularly fun to
wander through as it meandered about its myriad anecdotes.
From MISHA CHOCHOLAK: I really loved the TV panel thing. Sorry I made that
wisecrack and Terry Carr passed away.
From RUDY RUCKER: I like Lew's letter (on value of small mags). The astral
convention sounds like a great idea.
From DAVID D'AMMASSA: Brett Rutherford made some interesting points about
allusion, but he reall stepped into a pail of mud by saying "...roick and
song lyrics, by their very nature and because of the limited IQ's of most
performers, are generally inept and regressive if not Neanderthal in
content."
Granted, it is perfectly reasonable that for the sake of research,
Brett has listened to every song ever performed and tested the IQ's of every
rock performer currently in practice, thereby settling in his mind that every
song's lyrics are inept, but forgive me if I doubt it.
From LUKE MC GUFF: I got a chuckle out of Brett Rutherford's arguments
against pop music in stories. Hah! Forget it and calm down, dude, is what I
say.... Somebody who can't appreciate the vulgate poetry of something like
Hank Williams' "Honky Tonk Blues" or Johnny Cash's "Sunday Morning" or Jimmy
Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" or the Neville Brothers or Marvin Gaye or David
Byrne... they're lacking a certain element of soul.
In one case, the rock'n'roll/SF allusion has worked the other way.
The Jefferson Airplane quoted Jack Williamson in a song whose title I forget.
The lines are, "In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our rise. In
loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction." Did he get any
royalties from that
quotation?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FOOTNOTES OF GOR by Michael Cobley
1) BLOOD-SPATTERED BEER MUGS OF GOR
2) LONG ARM OF THE GOR
3) GOR AND ORDER
4) SIC TRANSIT GORIA MUNDI
5) THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOR, GO I!
+++++++++++++
RULES FOR SUCCESS
BY MEN AND WOMEN WHO HAVE SUCCEEDED -- SAVE ONE DOLLAR OUT OF EVERY FIVE --
GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT -- DON'T BE ASHAMED OF HONEST TOIL -- ECONOMY
NECESSARY TO SUCCESS -- HARD WORK THE CARDINAL REQUISITE -- GET A LITTLE
BUSINESS AND STICK TO IT
Astral Avenue 9 Paul Di Filippo 2 Poplar Street Providence RI 02906
