Sweet. My mom read The Divine Invasion and Time Out of Joint. She liked them. She liked Time better because it is more of a straight forward sci-fi tale, and she liked The Truman Show, which basically stole Dick's story.
Sweet. My mom read The Divine Invasion and Time Out of Joint. She liked them. She liked Time better because it is more of a straight forward sci-fi tale, and she liked The Truman Show, which basically stole Dick's story.
I actually find The Divine Invasion to be somewhat straightforward... but perhaps it just seemed straightforward in comparison to VALIS.
It's still my favorite P.K.D. Perhaps because it's even more explicitly theological than Valis, and I found the struggle somehow more compelling than the neurotic strugglers and stragglers in Valis.
"Modern weapons can defend freedom, civilization, and life only by annihilating them. Security in military language means the ability to do away with the Earth."
-Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society
I need to read it again, but I remember really, really liking DI. Perhaps even more so than VALIS, partially because of its strong theological currents.Quoting monolith94 (view post)
I actually find The Divine Invasion to be somewhat straightforward... but perhaps it just seemed straightforward in comparison to VALIS.
It's still my favorite P.K.D. Perhaps because it's even more explicitly theological than Valis, and I found the struggle somehow more compelling than the neurotic strugglers and stragglers in Valis.
Theodore Sturgeon on Science Fiction:
Q: What is your analysis of science fiction?
TS: I believe it is the wrong name for the field. It should have been called a number of other things - speculative fiction, for example. In many people's minds, science fiction is girls in brass brassieres about to be raped by a slimy monster, and being rescued by some guy fully dressed in a space suit with a zap gun. It is all in the future, all in space, it is all Star Wars and Buck Rogers.
Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called "other", which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.
It's things that happen inside your head. I've always said that there's more in inner space than in outer space. Inner space is so much more interesting, because outer space is so empty.
Q: Do you resent being classified as a science fiction writer?
TS: The reason I stayed in the science fiction field is that you can go anywhere with it. You just cannot do that in historical fiction, or costume drama or western or whatever because the lines are drawn so tightly. In science fiction, you can also test out your own realities. The world around you - is it a good thing or a bad thing? Create a world in which these things do or do not exist, or in which they are extended in some way. Test reality against this fiction. The reader will recognize the world that you're talking about, even though it may be another one altogether.
...
Q: How can you explain the eternalness of your writing? It never seems dated or concerned with trivial matters.
Q: Do you think it is essential to have something to believe in?
- TS: You see, I have a secret formula. A secret, magic formula that many writers are always looking for. I have a pretty good hold on this one. I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do. Writing is a communication. You don't sit up in a cave and write the Great American Novel and know it is utterly superb, and then throw it page by page into the fire. You just don't do that. You send it out. You have to send it out.
You must write to the people's expertise. In general, what are people expert at? Fear, love, loss, laughter and loneliness - above all, loneliness. You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody's an expert on that one. Sometimes it's called alienation, but it's something more than that. It's loneliness, not being separate from the whole world. It's a seeking, a searching for somebody who'll understand you.
There are really only two parts to writing: what you say, and how you say it. There are people who have tremendously important things to say, but they say it so poorly that nobody would ever want to read it. They don't know how to put it into the kind of vehicle that people will stop and get into.
And then, there are others who are so deft and graceful, but they're not really saying anything at all. When you combine something to say with the skill to say it properly, then you've got a good writer. The idea of something to say goes back to the individual matter of finding something to believe in.
Q: Which episodes of Star Trek did you write?
- TS: I've spent most of my life worrying about things that people believe in. More and more, I've come to the feeling that I'm looking for people who believe in something, virtually anything, providing they believe in it. We've been acculturated in the last fifty years or so to become so equitable in our thinking. Because of our ability to see both sides of every question, we cancel ourselves out. We've become political ciphers. We don't vote. We don't take sides. We say, "On the other hand ..." We say, "However..."
This world has been moved and shaken. The movers and shakers have always been obsessive nuts. Name any mover or shaker you like - I don't care if it's Attila the Hun or Jesus of Nazareth or Karl Marx or F.D.R. or Winston Churchill. They were all obsessive nuts. They were not even-minded people who saw both sides of the question. Far from it.
I'm not saying that I admire Adolf Hitler because he was a dedicated human being. That's an extreme situation. But without going to absolutely dangerous extremes, you have to be dedicated to something. You must really believe in something.
For example, look at the phenomenon of Star Trek. Star Trek was founded by a guy, Gene Roddenberry, who had some fine Mom and apple pie values. He believed in equality of the sexes, equality of the races, and in the American ideal of freedom and justice. He really and truly believed in these things, and still does to this day. Every episode of Star Trek bears out these particular convictions of Gene Roddenberry. You'll find some of these things in all of them. That's what Star Trek is about and this is why it has endured.
Some of the episodes were a little bit on the hokey side. George Jessel used to wrap an American flag around himself and dance across the stage in order to get applause. If people didn't applaud him, they were going to applaud the flag. Once in a while, Gene was guility of that and I won't deny it.
Nobody ever said that he was an equitable, even-handed liberal human being. He isn't. By no means, he isn't. He's an autocrat. Nevertheless, his convictions are real. And that's the one secret that Hollywood has still not understood - the matter of conviction, of believing in something.
- TS: As a matter of fact, I wrote six. I sold four, and two were aired, which was pretty well par for the course in those days. The two that were aired were Amok Time and Shore Leave. Shore Leave was the one that begins with the big rabbit. That was a gas because anything could happen. Any wild idea you could possibly have could be stuck into that script. Everybody had a good time with that one.
http://www.physics.emory.edu/~weeks/misc/duncan.html
I finished Double Star. It is not very good. It's so light, and fluffy, and there is hardly any conflict or drama worth mentioning. Even at 118 pages, it is too long.
At lunch I started To Marry Medusa/The Cosmic Rape, by Theodore Sturgeon. Damn it's good, and frightening, to be back in Sturgeon's mind. What a madman. Sturgeon has a way with words that just blows my mind. It's like he's writing with his own version of the English language. It's all concrete, and it is all good. So far, within the first 3 chapters, I've read of bum digesting a maggot infested, horse-meat hamburger, complete with alien spore, a date rape, and the ramblings of a mad prankster hiding in his victim's house, waiting to kill. Harrowing stuff!
Wow. Wow. Wow.
To Marry Medusa is awesome. Totally, mind blowingly, incredibly awesome. This is a book that could turn anyone into a fan of Sturgeon and the genre as a whole. Anyone who likes to read well written fiction, with amazing and harrowing situations, interesting characters, and a deep understanding of humanity will love this book. It also helps that it is simply overflowing with amazing ideas, darkness, love, passion, violence, and intense, overwhelming emotions.
This man is truly a literary giant.
I feel sorry for people who don't read Sturgeon - and I was one of these not too long ago. I cannot imagine my reading life without him now. Anyone who avoids him because of genre stigma should be ashamed. This is good reading, on par with anything I've ever read.
Started it today at lunch, just finished it. One of the most captivating books I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
Sounds awesome.
*Amazon's it*
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
It was also published under the title, The Cosmic Rape, which is a more apt title.
I started Frederick Pohl's Gateway this morning.
...
I was just thinking about Sturgeon. He was writing in the style of the new wave, complete with its vernacular, syntax and themes, like 10 years before the movement properly kicked off. It's amazing to think that I don't often see his name mentioned along side the other big names of this era: Bester and Ballard.
I think that Sturgeon is a writer's writer. He's the literary equivalent of King Crimson. He writes for people who enjoy the craft of writing. So many authors love the dude, and yet the world at large seems to be kept in the dark. It's not that his stuff if impenetrable , either. It definitely has a unique rhythm and flow, but I've never had the feeling that he was trying to impress people with his prose. It's honest and heartfelt, and full of emotion. I feel elated after having read a Sturgeon book, more so than any other author I can think of.
To Marry Medusa - Theodore Sturgeon
Gurlick. The illiterate stumble bum. The drunken louse, the destroyer of humanity. The eater of the soggy, discarded, horse-meat hamburger. The receptacle for the alien's spawn.
The Medusa. An alien hive-mind. The consumer of two galaxies, whose next target is the Earth.
Guido. The hater of melody, the murderous prankster. Hell-bent on the total annihilation of all music, and those who would make it.
Henry. The boy too-tall for his age, with a face like an adult's. Abused by his father. “You're a sissy, a coward,” he says. So scared and frightened, all he can do is cry.
Dimity Carmichael. An ugly and lonely woman. Haggard. She lives vicariously through the sexual escapades of a young woman addicted to the act.
Sharon Brevix. The four year old. Inadvertently left on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere by her mother and father. Left all alone, except for a doll, to wander the country side.
So far as I can tell, Theodore Sturgeon did not populate his books with typical heroes. His books are not full of dashing men and gorgeous woman performing feats of daring-do, saving the world, and having a grand time doing it. Sturgeon liked to introduce his readers to the less desirable, the dregs of humanity, the discarded, the forgotten, the downtrodden. The kind of people, good or bad, that other people consciously try to avoid coming in contact with. You know the kind. You're walking down the street. Ahead of you, you see a man. He looks dirty, unkempt, you can already smell him. Is that piss, or blood streaming down his leg? Does he only have one shoe on? You don't know him. He could be a great man on the inside, a man in need of compassion, or help, or a dollar, or a smoke. All you know is that at the next light, you're crossing, even though you don't need to. And then, perhaps later, you start to question why you did what you did. As human beings, shouldn't we want to help one another? Sturgeon writes about these kinds men and woman, and he does so with passion, with sincerity, and with an uncanny understanding of humanity.
Like The Dreaming Jewels and More Than Human, To Marry Medusa is not a book to be taken lightly, to flippantly read through to pass the time. Even though Sturgeon was toying with genre conventions, and working within the realm of science fiction, this is heavy duty stuff. Essentially, you could boil down the book's plot to a simple alien invasion story. This is the skinny, wireframe, the postulation: what if an alien hive mind came to consume the Earth, and what if this being's first contact with humanity was in the shape of a total loser, a man who hated humanity? In order to bring the minds of the people back into formation, to reform the gestalt of the one mind, The Medusa must first learn how to work through a fractured and troubled psyche.
So, while the basic idea itself is nothing new, the way Sturgeon handles it casts forth a brilliant light and strips away any feelings of tiredness, cliche, and banality. The structure alternates between the Gurlick/Medusa arc, and a series of anecdotes detailing the actions of different characters throughout the world. What do these seemingly random events have to do with The Medusa's plan? At first, things feel disjointed, chaotic, and strange. Sturgeon switches POV, one of the narratives is told through the first person, while the others are told through third person, and it really isn't clear what any of these anecdotes have to do with anything. However, rest assured, Sturgeon brings everything together in a masterful way. It is clear that I was in the hands of an author who truly understood the power of fiction, and knew how to craft his prose to deliver the maximum impact. Sturgeon's writing is exemplary, but it is not often easy to read. He has a unique voice, with his own rhythm and cadence. He's a literary King Crimson, and once you tap into his gig, it totally delivers in amazing ways.
I - and “I,” now, think as I work of what is happening - a different kind of thinking than any I have ever known...if thinking was seeing, then all my life I have thought in a hole in the ground, and now I think on a mountaintop. To think of any question is to thing of the answer, if the answer exists in the experience of any other part of “I.” If I wonder what I was chosen to make that leap from the car, using all my strength and all its speed to carry me exactly to that point in space where the descending machines would be, then the wonder doesn't last long enough to be called that: I know why I was chosen, on the instant of wondering
To Marry Medusa takes the concepts of an alien invasion, and wraps around this simple convention a vibrant exploration of humanity. At it's core are the themes important to Sturgeon, themes dealing with loss, loneliness, love, abuse, and passion. More so than any other genre author I have read, I get the sense that Sturgeon truly loved humanity. Even while he was writing about despicable characters doing nasty things to one another and themselves, he never comes across as being misanthropic. He was not pointing out these biological blemishes to say how faulty we are, but, rather, he was showing us the directions in which we should aim our compassion, love, patience, and understanding. Sometimes it is hard for us to see the humanity under the grotesque surface, but Sturgeon could, and I believe that he wanted to help lift this veil so that we might experience something good and awesome.
Gateway is pretty good so far. It has an interesting main character, he's a total coward and not heroic at all. At least, not so far. I like the character interactions, and the premise is interesting as heck. Mankind has discovered a hollowed out asteroid. They determine that an ancient race called the Heechee used it as a kind of intergalactic hub. Scattered around the surface of the asteroid are thousands of ships. Each ship can go to a few pre-determined destinations, chosen seemingly at random, and then they return to the hub. The humans volunteer to take these ships to wherever they go, and then look for artifacts and stuff to take back to the Earth and sell. The are intergalactic prospectors. However, sometimes the ships go to very dangerous places, and sometimes the crew comes back dead. Each trip is a gamble.
My mom is loving "The Crack in Space".
She says it's like nothing she's ever read before - which is true, since she has always hated the idea of reading science fiction.
But she sees now what I meant when I said it's not like the typical sci-fi involving busty women blasting away aliens in cheesy galactic space operas.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I read this book the other week. It was pretty good.
Glad you liked it.
I thought the ending was brilliant.
Well, I think the whole damn thing is brilliant, but that ending's a definite punch in the gut.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
It's strange. People often talk about this as their idea of what sci-fi is, but as a reader of the genre, rarely do I ever come across this kind of stuff. I guess I've just had good road maps provided for me - I've known what to look for, and what to stay away from.
I see that kind of stuff as fantasy, not sci-fi.
I find things are too-often qualified as sci-fi just because they take place in space, or involve people with laser guns.
To me, sci-fi is more about ideas and philsophical concepts than about the setting of the future/space/other worlds.
I have always considered the Star Wars movies to be fantasy, not sci-fi.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
I liked the bit with the dog the best.
I wasn't blown away by the book or anything, but it was solid.
Yes that was very good, and very sad.
What did you think of the book's more scientific take on vampirism?
Granted, it's been done since then in stuff like Blade, but I thought it was done much better here.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Pretty well thought out, some things were more convincing than others. You should see the British show Ultraviolet if you haven't, it's along similar lines.
As long as you're not trying to trick me into seeing the Milla Jovovich movie, I'll check it out.
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
My mom finished "The Crack in Space" and loved it from start-to-finish.
We spent quite a while just talking about it and the ideas it brings forth about race, religion, politics, etc.
She said she is going to be asking me pretty soon for another PKD book to read
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
Pohl's Gateway is pretty good. A lot different than what I had imagined. The premise led me to believe this would be a kind of space opera teeming with exploration and mystery, but it's not. It really is an intricate character study of a deeply troubled space prospector who learns to deal with feelings of guilt, homosexuality, love and loss. Like the character, the narrative kind of meanders around for long stretches of time, and simply exists to convey emotions of oppression, depression and apathy. There were many times where I felt like grabbing the main character by the lapel and slapping him around. It is well written and interesting, and offered something a little different, I just don't know if I enjoyed where it went.
Next up, three shorts by Sturgeon:
Case and the Dreamer
If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?
When You Care, When You Love
I finished a short story by Sturgeon this evening called, If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister.
It extrapolates upon its taboo subject masterfully, and once we get to the meat of the narrative, and we realize what it is that Sturgeon is conveying, it becomes rather thought provoking.
Why are some things so taboo that we cannot, no matter what the ends, see past them? Are there things that are so taboo that we would rather avoid them even if embracing them might, say, lead to the cure of cancer and insanity?
This seems like the basic question Sturgeon asked himself before writing. And in the long list of taboo subjects, there isn't much of anything more taboo than incest.
I've always thought of Sturgeon as an author who liked to push buttons, and this offers more proof. However, he does not press buttons for shock value, but, instead, he does so so that we will look at things in a slightly different light, and continue, or begin, to "Ask the question."
Ask the question.
Was that not Sturgeon's motto, his mantra, the guiding thought behind most everything he wrote?
While he is only playing devil's advocate here, he is most definitely not condoning incestuous relationships, he does bring up some fascinating questions about the topic.
Let's simply agree that incest is absolutely morally wrong. What is so biologically wrong with it? Most people will answer that the problem comes with a thinning gene pool and that babies will be born with deformities and with mental retardation. But aren't babies born with these problems in "normal" sexual relationships? And, don't "normally" sexually active people engage in the act of sex without the desire to reproduce? Why does the word "incest" trigger within us thoughts of biological defect? Dogs and cows are inbred, by human manipulators, to bring about desirable biological traits. A bull will have its way with generations of its own offspring. And we encourage this for our own well-being.
Ask the question.
Don't just agree with the answers we are told.
Sturgeon is amazing.
I started reading Sturgeon's, The [Widget], the [Wadget] and Boff this morning. It's in a two volume collection I got yesterday called, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction. It is a really good collection.
Anyhow, so far Sturgeon's story is fantastic. It examines humanity from the eyes of an alien race. This alien race has determined that all beings, throughout the universe, have an innate ability to socially self-adjust so as to cause as little trouble for their respective societies as possible. However, there is only one species that his this trait but often times refuses to use it: Homo sapiens.
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