6:27 a.m. - 2023-07-17
a long, tedious, book report
I don't read as much as I used to, which is a damn shame. More shameful than that though, is how hard-pressed I am to account for the time I used to spend reading. When I had my last *grown-up* job I would sit at a restaurant bar and read every day on my lunch-breaks. It was a brain-tonic after a morning spent busy w/CAD modeling, CNC prototyping, e-mail negotiations w/our Chinese manufacturing partners etc. And, since I was a *grown-up*, these lunches could could run quite long, depending on what I was reading and how thirsty I happened to be. But now I just sit, apparently? Bookless at the bar? Getting drawn into inane conversations...
I was at my redneck local last week, and a group of regulars was discussing the opening of yet-another fast food chain in town; and clearly excited by the prospect. So much so that this conversation carried on, in mind-numbing circles, for over half an hour before one of them asked me, as I sat alone at my usual end of the bar, to weigh in. I should mention that I've heard these exact same people have this exact same conversation for the last ten years*, and that every time I hear it it's more depressing...underscoring what a tragic waste they've made of it all (this gift of life and such); how tightly-drawn their horizons have become, and what an existentially pointless chore waking up every day must be, to make one look so very forward to another fast-food dinner, presented in a different box. So this (along with the painful acknowledgment that I'd been wasting enough of my own life drinking in the same smoke-filled room to have heard ten years' worth of these stories) caused me to blurt loudly, without thinking, “Fuck this town”. Everyone got quiet and the subject was dropped. I finished my beer and headed home, feeling bad for the bartender, who is a lovely friend/occasional-hookup, 'cause I didn't mean to piss all over her shift; but I stand by the sentiment. Anyway, the point here is: I should have been reading a book.
And it's no better at home; the rocking chairs on the back-porch, the shaded picnic table by the creek, all the places where I used to park it and plow through rare finds and new releases, through recommended reading and bucket-list classics, all sit empty of late. Because I'm busy doing what, again? Half-listening to a baseball game on the radio while I bounce between my chess app and Instagram posts? Or sitting at my desk idly scrolling/reflex-refreshing my news feed? When I could have been reading a book?
Or a hundred other more-productive things, of course...but I've fallen, generally, into aimlessness, and my days into aimless routine. So I'd looked forward to the prospect of vacation this year; where routine is suspended, and time for reading is ample and always appropriate. Also--choosing my literary travel companions has always been an integral part of trip planning. But owing to my passport uncertainty, I'd neglected to order anything on my reading list.
(“Neglected to order anything”, Ernst? You mean like, online? From Amazon? Why aren't you supporting your local brick-and-mortar booksellers, dude? Well I do but...)
Bookshop-wise I have two local options. Entertainmart sells books...alongside video games, DVDs, Magic: the Gathering™ cards, collectable swords, paintball supplies and cell-phone accessories. They can generally be relied upon to stock best-sellers and their ever-dwindling periodical rack is, sadly, the only game in town. My luck perusing their stacks? Spotty. Across town, Books To Share offers an equally curious, albeit more focused, alternative. It's a humble paperback exchange run by a mousy very-Christian lady and her mousy very-Christian daughter. The place is funky; and I'm not talking about the maze-like layout or the questionable curating standards applied to the “classics” section, I'm talking about funky. And this is coming from someone who happens to dig the smell of old books...but there's another, almost organic, olfactory note on top of that. Which, obviously, has nothing to do with the fact that 40% of their inventory is Romance novels; tales of lust and fantasy that lonely women may or may not have masturbated to, feverishly turning the pages of their dog-eared books to share. Because what kind of a creep would even think a thing like that, right? Certainly not me every time I walk into the place.
Aside from that room full of lurid covers and florid prose, other pulp genres are predictably represented; Westerns (natch), Murder Mysteries, various Tom-Clancy-flavored offerings and, of course, Science Fiction--the main reason I stop in. They've a surprisingly substantial inventory, mostly of older titles. I used to tear through the stuff when I was a kid, so I'm familiar with the heavy hitters of that era, your Heinleins, Clarkes and Nivens'; your Pohls, Herberts and Ursula Le Guins. But I do wish I had a deeper handle on the output of their less-celebrated peers. Some critical context on those obscure, manual-typewritin' futurists as I browse the shelves...reading their outrageous plot encapsulations (bold-printed above breathless blurbs from other writers I've never heard of) and pondering the content-implications signified by their cover art. Because the publishing houses churned out paperbacks back in those days. Which was great, in that it provided opportunity for talented voices and stories that would've gone unpublished in a less-robust fiction market to get a chance, at least, on those revolving wire paperback displays that once enticed dime-store readers from coast-to-coast. It also meant that they flooded those same displays with some absolute dreck.
But that's a risk you take right? To discover something great? And one easier to take when the risk is mitigated by Books To Share's pricing policy, because everything costs half the cover price. Which, when you're talking pulp sci-fi from the 60's, gets embarrassingly cheap. So if you do stumble across something fabulous, you may only be out ninety-seven cents (keep the change ladies, and thank you, I will “have a blessed day”). Wilder still: if you bought some rubbish reading the last time, or need to cull your own paperback collection (or find that a certain Romance novel just doesn't “get 'er done” anymore), you can exchange them for credit. This is logged on an index-card with your name and filed in a recipe box behind the checkout desk. And every book “shared” entitles you to half-off of half-off your next purchase. So I started to do the math here, and as a business model this strikes me as a bit anemic... But they've been open for 34 years, and their lights are still on at a time when Amazon and their ilk have shuttered more ambitious competition. So maybe they're onto something? And who doesn't cheer for the cockroach, emerging oblivious from the rubble of a bombed-out shopping mall?
So when, giddy w/disbelief that my passport arrived, I dashed into town to buy tiny toothpaste and tiny deodorant and a pair of sunglasses (so I'd have something to forget to pack), I also swung by Books To Share, hoping to scare up something “interesting”. Whereupon I chanced across this, which qualified.
Even had I not heard tell of this collection, I may well have bought it for the hapless appeal of the cover art alone. Which...makes an impression. (Although the sunglasses wrapping over the spine is a pretty rad touch.) I'm also familiar with several of the authors represented, because the cyberpunk aesthetic has always appealed to me. Bruce Sterling's preface to this volume is oft-referenced as their group manifesto, and I found that a contemporary reading echoes both the strengths and weaknesses of the movement. One strength? Prescience:
“The cyberpunks are perhaps the first SF generation to grow up not only within the literary tradition of science fiction but in a truly science-fictional world. For them the techniques of classical “hard SF”—extrapolation, technological literacy—are not just literary tools but an aid to daily life. They are a means of understanding, and highly valued.”
“Technology itself has changed. Not for us are the giant steam-spitting wonders of the past: the Hoover Dam, the Empire Sate Building, the nuclear power plant. Eighties tech sticks to the skin, responds to the touch: the personal computer, the Sony Walkman, the portable telephone, the soft contact lens.”
The Walkman comes up more than once in this preface, and on first reading I chuckled at its analog inclusion...but it was, in retrospect, a harbinger of our contemporary reality. Of the public introversion of the individual--we were suddenly busy listening to our own private radio stations, and not to be bothered. Substitute a hand-held screen and yeah, here we are. And of course this prescient “extrapolation” of nascent tech wasn't anything new, it's what science fiction writers do. If we can fly across the Atlantic why not then to the Moon, and if to the Moon where next? Likewise, every societal upheaval could be drawn out to its dystopian conclusion: totalitarianism, overpopulation, pollution, the cold war...the sexual revolution. But while Assimov and company typed outward towards the stars, the cyberpunks turned their sights inward: towards “virtual worlds” that existed, somehow, on silicon microchips; and towards unexplored corners of the psyche, accessible only through the aid of future pharmaceutical enhancement.
William Gibson’s prediction of the internet (among other things) back in '84 epitomizes this. And the way his speculative tech manifests in the grittiest of milieus exemplifies another shared trait of the Mirrorshades group; they were fascinated with interzones. Places where, as Gibson himself put it, “the street finds its own uses for things”. And yeah man who isn't? You thought the "cantina scene" in Star Wars was cool? How 'bout we set a whole movie in an interzone? Enter: Blade Runner, Mad Max, Escape From New York and (a personal fave) Cherry 2000. How much of this pop-aesthetic impact can be attributed to these writers, and how much of it was the inevitable reaction of a generation that watched their '50s facade of the “American Dream” crumble to reveal something scarily dystopian is debatable...but the term “cyberpunk” stuck.
Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash was published nine years after Gibson's Neuromancer, and they're often mentioned in the same breath re: literary tech-prescience. Indeed, not only was Stephenson's vision of an interactive “virtual reality” predictive, it remains a template for future development, as a survey of today's nascent VR “worlds” attests. That said, after reading it (on a flight to Tokyo, that most cyberpunk of cities), I came away nonplussed. The concept was great, but the characters felt two-dimensional and the action played out with a sort of comic-book predictability. The bad guys being ever-so-very bad and the chase scenes peppered with action-movie tropes...it had a lot of thirteen year-old boy appeal, basically. Stephenson came along too late to be part of the Mirrorshades collection, but my disappointment w/Snow Crash typifies my reaction to a lot of cyberpunk. Because many of the movement's weaknesses were an inherent part of the style. I'll let our editor illustrate:
“Mirrored sunglasses have been a movement totem since the early days of '82. The reasons for this are not hard to grasp. By hiding the eyes, mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws. Mirrorshades—preferably in chrome or matte black, the Movement's totem colors—appeared in story after story, as a kind of literary badge.”
That, as my little nephew would say, is “cringe”. Also indicative. Because time and again these authors are too-obviously “trying” to be cool; an oxymoronic proposition. Often this manifests in fetishistic descriptions of future fashion or music. Haircuts, jewelry, outfits, itemized piercings, trendy skin-tints and cosmetic contact lenses...all described in painstaking (to read) detail. This sartorial signification often seems to reduce character development to a sort of “high school hallway” simplicity: skater, jock, prep, metal-dude. Plus, in the context of a short story, dedicating precious paragraphs to speculative fashion trends and belabored descriptions of music the reader can't hear feels like a tedious waste of time. I mean, sci-fi world-building over the course of twenty pages seems challenging enough already, no? And the great writers do it with an economy of words that leaves room for the plot to stretch its legs a bit (I see you, Ray Bradbury). The other problem of course is that most of these writers are fucking nerds. Stay in your lane, nerds...you wanna know who was cool? Issac Assimov. You know who else? Carl Sagan. Lean into your strengths my dudes.
So the subject matter and stylistic tendencies of what I've been referring to as a “movement” would eventually become a label, a “sub-genre” stretching back to encompass its influences (Alfred Bester, P.K. Dick), then laterally to define specific works by writers with a broader catalog (Murakami, Margaret Atwood and, of course, J.G. Ballard), and that now leans forward to bring the burgeoning energy of Manga comics into the fold. And despite my criticism, I find cyberpunk (since we're calling it that), when it's done well, an absolute pleasure to read. The visceral plot-propulsion of a Raymond Chandler or an Ian Flemming novel with a side of sci-fi candy to fuel the imagination while it runs wild on a page-turning sugar high? What's not to love? This is rare, though. And as far as Mirrorshades, our work in question, is concerned...well, um.
After two plane flights and five nights in Mexico I was only about halfway through it so...yeah. Which isn't to say that it's bad, necessarily. It's just hit-or-miss; and maybe also that the misses “miss” harder than the hits “hit”? I'm glad I picked it up though; if only for Sterling's preface. Because while it's corny as hell, it's also drunk w/confidence. Confidence that these stories mattered; that the fingers of these authors weren't only on the pulse of the times, but also an amphetamine in the system...accelerating the heartbeat. I was 17 in '86 when this collection was published, and his naive enthusiasm here takes me right back-again...so yeah, “cringe” or no, his dystopian confidence is punk as fuck. So I'll find space for it on my as-of-yet-unbuilt (anyone know a reliable carpenter?) new bookshelf.
Side note--Sterling's writing came vividly to mind as I stood in line at the hospital a few years ago. His opus, Schismatrix, posits a future where our solar system has been settled by expatriate humans who've self-evolved to adapt to the challenges of non-terrestrial existence; but on two divergent paths. The Mechanists augment themselves surgically with both analog mechanization and computer chips, the Shapers do it genetically through DNA manipulation. So when I heard I was getting the Moderna vaccine, developed with an mRNA tech that fascinates me, I was weirdly stoked. 'Cause it felt kinda...proto-“Shaper”? (Who's the nerd, again?)
Also still—if you are intrigued by the Schismatrix plot conceit and want to read more, I would recommend seeking out this instead. There's five short stories included here that succinctly illustrate/dramatize the Shaper/Mechanist dichotomy; told this time by a writer whose chops had tightened appreciably over the five years between the two publications.
OK dear reader, you can wipe the glaze from your eyes now, because we're wrappin' 'er up. And if it's of any consolation please know: I started writing this entry with a description of the fisherman's bar in MX where I like to sit and read but realized, around the page and a half mark, that I was just getting warmed-up, and weighing how much of that narrative should reflect the changing political/socio-economic dynamics of Isla Mujeres. So I cut bait and archived that thread before it hijacked my yet-unwritten post. And you'll be exponentially more-relieved to learn that two paragraphs ago, when I caught myself writing synopsis/critiques of individual stories within the Mirrorshades collection...I gave pause, put the coffee down, walked it off, and deleted. Because, even if there was merit to (or an audience for) nonacademic, carpenter-penned, literary criticism of an ambitious but poorly aging sci-fi anthology, this probably isn't the venue. So I'll endeavor to hew to more personal, less abstract subject matter moving forward, e.g. the subtle gradations of feeling between my ennui and malaise, smoke-filled honky-tonks full of (other) losers and quirky, Christian-ish used bookstores that totally don't smell like p*ssy.
*Six years ago Burger King, the only national burger chain without a location here, announced it was moving in. And boy did I hear about it. From the moment they broke ground on the site the locals made it clear to me how long they'd been anticipating this day...how Whopper-deprived they'd been (it's smokey, w/grill-marks!) and how, every time they had to go to San Antonio they were sure to get 'em some Burger King. I'd heard this same San Antonio story, from these same people, about Arby's (we have one now), Chick-fil-A (we have one now) and Olive Garden (are they still in business?). But the town was true to its word (for a day at least). The day Burger King opened, the cars lined up for the drive-thru stretched beyond its parking lot, onto our busiest street, around the block and down a side street for five more blocks. The police were dispatched to direct traffic, and the queue crept slowly all afternoon until, presumably, they ran out of smokey, grill-marked meat patties. I was driving w/a friend on an errand, and when we passed we honked and waved and laughed and laughed and then laughed again to keep from crying at that tragic, telling display of banal enthusiasm. The event was the top story in our local paper the next day, of course, with a page-wide photo of cars waiting in line featured under a giant headline that read “ROYAL PROCESSION”. Sigh.
