THE CURIOUS WORLD OF ARTHUR BYRON COVER (1991)
The world of Arthur Byron Cover reads like a
Classic Comics
version of Hieronymus Bosch: grotesqueries there are aplenty, unexplained and inexplicable, wandering the bizarre landscape of a caricature Earth, interacting with each other in curious and unique ways, seeking neither resolution nor evolution nor solution, but just existing as they are. Forget about plots, forget about the conventionalities of science fiction or fantasy, or of fiction in general: you won’t find them here. What you
will
find are orts from Cover’s intellectual table, pieces and snatches of characters, conversations, situations, perambulations, rearranged in new and interesting ways.
Take, for example, the author’s first novel,
Autumn Angels
(1975). We see a strange, far-future or other-dimensional Earth dominated by godlike beings scrapping over philosophical nullities while trying to establish his or her own position. Each has assumed the guise of a well-known fictional character of the past—from comic books, pulp fiction, motion pictures, or television—and is known to the reader only by the label of his or her choice (“the demon,” “the lawyer,” “the fat man,” “the other fat man,” etc.). The only named characters are two “bems” (“bug-eyed monsters” in SF parlance), Dwit and Xit, the aliens who had originally metamorphosed the race of man into “godlike man” as a joke. The plot, if such exists, meanders back and forth across a landscape of broken conversations and philosophical musings. Each of these beings is searching for a unique identity in a world where individualities have failed; each seeks something to give him or her purpose: a name, a self, a reason for living. But the best that the demon, the lawyer, and the fat man can do at story’s end, with all of their immense powers, is to cause the two alien bems to instill a sense of depression into their world, a form of negative identity that may help alter the stasis into which the godlike men have fallen.
The results of the trio’s action can be seen in two later works by Cover, “The Clam of Catastrophe” (in the collection
The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists
[1976]) and the long novel,
An East Wind Coming
(1979). “Clam” introduces the character of the Consulting Detective, a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, who is hired by the three beings to discover why sexism, which they have introduced into the world of the future to offset the effects of depression, has divided the godlike beings into two warring camps. To achieve the greatness of mere man, the detective ultimately concludes, godlike man must explore the ramifications of love, not sex.
An East Wind Coming
, the author’s major work of fiction, further explores the theme of identity, as the consulting detective and the good doctor must face the threat of a new Jack the Ripper, who is using an anti-matter knife to disembowel female godlike beings. After murdering his final victim, the Seller of Speculations (
i.e.
, a bookseller: Cover himself is co-owner of a science-fiction shop, Dangerous Visions), the ripper is forced by the detective to destroy himself, thus ending the threat to the godlike beings. The right of the individual to be individual has thus been reaffirmed.
Three other Cover novels deserve some mention. The author’s second book,
The Sound of Winter
(1976), relates the story of Michael St. Claire, a would-be revolutionary, and his mute sister, Elizabeth, who travel from the City to the Wasteland, seeking a new way of life. Ultimately, Elizabeth regains her tongue, but is killed by her husband, and Michael comes to the realization that he never really understood anything about his sister’s character—or about life in general. The book reads like a nineteenth-century Russian travelogue, and remains one of the most accessible of his works.
Two later books,
Planetfall
(1988) and
Stationfall
(1989), plus
Futurefall
, an uncompleted third book in the projected trilogy, reflect a change in direction for Cover, utilizing synthesized pulp and animation influences to produce more directly a deliberately farcical and very broadly-based SF satire. Although billed as game tie-ins, these two fictions have very little to do with the actual games from which they were theoretically derived, but take various elements from hackneyed science-fiction plots, reworking them
à la
Monty Python into a crazy patchwork of slapstick humor. Both are hilarious satires well-worth a second read.
The author’s other works include a readable novelization of the screenplay for
Flash Gordon
(1980), three time-travel gamebooks for young adults, two tie-ins to multi-author series (
Isaac Asimov’s Robot City: Prodigy
[1988]) and
Robert Silverberg’s Time Tours: The Dinosaur Trackers
, written with Tim Sullivan and John Gregory Betancourt under the joint pseudonym, Thomas Shadwell [1991]), and a handful of short stories, the latest of which appeared in
Down & Dirty
(1988), the fifth of George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards mosaic novels. His most recent contributions have been to graphic stories in the comic book,
Disney Adventures
.
Cover’s novels share a certain common framework, jumbling together elements from science fiction, the pulps, magic realism, detective fiction, music, comic books, movies, comedy, and the theatre into semi-coherent polemics about the manner in which people live their lives. The author’s chief characters are quintessential outsiders trying to make sense of an essentially meaningless existence. Cover was particularly influenced by the Fireside Theatre, having noted how the actors utilized odd remarks, lines, and themes from extremely diverse sources to create something unique and darkly satirical. He has tried to regenerate this feeling in his fiction, which is filled with non-sequiturs, scrambled plots, and snatches of philosophy.
At its best, Cover’s work is exciting and stimulating, filled with fresh ideas presented in new and unique ways. At its worst, his style can seem incomprehensible, tangled, even ponderous, and certainly different from the expectations of the average reader. But then, you can’t always tell a book by its Cover.
THE FANTASTIC FICTION OF WILLIAM F. NOLAN (1991)
William F. Nolan started his creative life as an artist, but quickly turned to the more lucrative science-fiction and men’s magazines in the mid-1950s. Nolan was one of a group of Southern California SF writers that included (at times) the late Charles Beaumont, Ray Russell, George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, the late Chad Oliver, and others. These authors not only socialized together frequently or occasionally, but also used their common interests in fantastic literature, film, television, and professional racing to develop a myriad of creative projects, often in collaboration. Although each writer eventually went his own way, artistically and personally, for the ten-year period from 1955-1965 most followed a similar path, moving from pulp fiction to slick nonfiction to the lucrative television market.
Nolan has been a full-time freelancer from the beginning, producing some fifteen hundred short fiction and nonfiction works in the course of his career, plus sixty-odd books, forty teleplays, and a dozen screenplays. Although his career has been a financial success, his work has been spread across so many subjects and genres that he remains relatively unheralded as a writer. Still, the frequency with which Nolan’s 130 stories continue to be regularly anthologized (“Small World” has been reprinted at least twenty times) is a sign of his continuing popularity and deepening influence as a writer.
Nolan’s reputation as an SF writer seems secure, resting primarily on wide popular acceptance of two fictional creations, Logan the Sandman and Sam Space.
Logan’s Run
(written with George Clayton Johnson [1967]), together with its two sequels, both written by Nolan alone,
Logan’s World
(1977) and
Logan’s Search
(1980), represent the high water mark of the author’s science-fiction career, having been turned into both a successful motion picture and a television series, as well as being adapted into a popular comic book series.
In the not-so-distant future, young people have revolted and killed all the adults. The new regime decrees that henceforward anyone reaching the age of twenty-one (age thirty in the screen version) shall voluntary undergo euthanasia; those who refuse to die shall be hunted down by the police (the Sandmen) and summarily executed. A massive computer (“The Thinker”) is built to control the world and enforce the new rules. The new world state provides each citizen with everything he/she might want: travel, drugs, pleasures of all kinds, even work for those who want it—but everything ends at twenty-one. Logan 3 is a Sandman who begins questioning the system after being forced to terminate a young girl. As his own time begins running out, Logan searches for Sanctuary, the semi-mythical place to which some runners have apparently escaped, and meets Jessica 6, with whom he forms a lasting and loving relationship. After a series of harrowing adventures, including a confrontation with the Thinker which succeeds in shutting down the machine, Logan and Jessica find Sanctuary, and live to fight another day.
In
Logan’s World
, Logan and Jessica return to find the Sandman system largely destroyed, except for a group of renegade Sandmen who are trying to repair the damaged Thinker. In the ensuing chaos, Logan’s son is killed, the Thinker is destroyed, and mankind is left to find its own way to the future.
Logan’s Search
concludes the Trilogy with Logan’s attempt to defeat the Sandman system on a parallel Earth where the Thinker still exists.
Logan is Everyman, the man forced by conscience and circumstance to blaze a new path for himself—and for mankind. The signs of systemic failure are everywhere, literally and figuratively: this brave new world of the future, itself once representing a great turning point in the history of the human race, has come full circle, to a cultural and historical dead end. The machines are breaking down—and so is human society. Logan must destroy the old, rekindle the new, and show man the way to a new civilization. In another sense, Logan is also Nolan (one name being nearly the anagram of the other): the author as iconoclast, the artist as creator/destroyer, the rebel
with
a cause, the self-made man remaking himself in fiction. Complacency is sterility, the author seems to be saying, a life without challenge a life not worth living. Mankind cannot stand still: it must either move forward—or die.
The three Sam Space books—
Space for Hire
(1971),
Look Out for Space
(1985), and the collection,
3 for Space
(1992)—represent the second and third main strands in Nolan’s fiction: farce and hard-boiled detective fiction. Sam Space (
i.e
., “Sam Spade” in SF terms) is a Mars-based private eye who always seems to be getting himself into impossibly wacky situations. Nolan manages to satirize the conventions of both the mystery and science-fiction genres, as well as modern mores, his fellow authors, and the world in general. Other stories in this vein include: “The Day the Gorf Took Over,” “The Fasterfaster Affair,” “Papa’s Planet” (a robot-Hemingway send-up), and “Jenny Among the Zeebs” (a rock n’ roll spoof).
In the 1980s Nolan moved away from SF into dark fantasy, producing a horror novel,
Helltracks
(1991), and some fifty short stories, the best of which have been collected into
Things Beyond Midnight
(1984) and
Night Shapes
(1995). Like his frequent early collaborator, Charles Beaumont, Nolan has proven particularly effective at depicting the unpleasant side of human nature, and his stories are filled with clever twists, a legacy of his work in the mystery genre. These tales reflect a more cynical view of man’s nature, one in which there are not always happy endings or Pollyannish characters, in which evil is both acknowledged and sometimes prevails.
In the 1990s Nolan’s work has again zagged into new directions, with the author producing a series of mystery thrillers which feature “The Black Mask Boys”—Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner—functioning as amateur detectives in the Hollywood of the 1930s. The first of these,
The Black Mask Murders
(narrated by Hammett) was published in 1994, with
The Marble Orchard
(narrated by Chandler) following in 1996.
In these and in all of Nolan’s fictions we find the writer sitting to one side, deliberately sharpening his authorial knife and covertly slicing away at man, his machines, and his conventions. Some of his stories may have more-or-less happy endings, but even these drip with skepticism and often twist into strange angles by tale’s end. In Nolan’s fictional world nothing is as it seems, no one is safe, and happiness always comes with a price tag attached.
(1991)
NOTE:
In response to a proposal to revise membership rules to allow only the top-producing SF writers to retain “active” membership in the professional organization, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc., Reginald wrote the following letter to the
SFWA Forum
. It was never published.
Dear Folks:
I agree, let’s throw the riffraff out; the presence of hundreds of itinerant, would-be, or played-out writers only tends to corrupt the very few of us (at least seven) who constitute the
real
professionals, if in no other way than by filling SFWA’s coffers. We need to return to being a small, impoverished, largely irrelevant writers’ union. In fact, Dafydd ap Hugh
et al.
don’t go nearly far enough with their proposals; we must use this opportunity to purge the membership of those who are culturally, intellectually, and authorially inferior to those of us qualified to judge such matters. I therefore suggest these small emendations to the proposed membership qualification changes:
Alternative One
Writers shall qualify for active membership in SFWA when they have published ten SF novels, and shall thereafter be permanently qualified. Each member’s vote shall be weighted according to the cumulative record of SF books published, each monograph counting for one vote. Members shall qualify for office when they have published fifty novels. Writers who don’t qualify shall be called amateurs.
Comment
Under this proposal, short fiction, anthologies, nonfiction works, etc., wouldn’t count for qualification purposes, since they reflect a less than serious effort on the part of the writer to attain true professional status. Personally, I think this category should be limited even further, to ten cloth novels, since otherwise Lionel Fanthorpe would have the largest vote (160+), and he is, after all, a foreigner, and probably not worthy anyway. One could also set a minimum length of 200 pages (or 80,000 words) to qualify; this would help keep out those goddam “paperback writers.” They’re all hacks, every one of them.
Alternative Two
Writers shall be eligible for membership in SFWA when personally recommended by already-qualified members of the organization, and when they have submitted to the Membership Committee a notarized statement prepared by a certified public accountant, showing that their annual income has exceeded for at least the five previous consecutive years a level of $100,000, at least one dollar of which must have been derived from professional sales of SF-related fiction or nonfiction. A member shall be accorded the number of votes appropriate to his or her income level (
i.e
., status), with one vote being awarded for every $50,000 of income. Dues shall be assessed inversely proportionate to income. Nebulas will annually be auctioned off to the highest bidders.
Comment
This proposal really cuts to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? We want a wealthy, elite, intellectual organization, not a bunch of poor, self-trained hacks. I want to know that the idiot sitting next to me at the Nebula Banquets has some real knowledge, for Christ’s sake, of the watery vintage he or she is gurgling down by the gallon. We’ve got to draw the line somewhere, and cash is the easiest way to do it. Another variation of this plan would simply have the Membership Committee assess the net wealth of prospective members, and rank them from 1-100, limiting the organization to no more than that number (we can always have less!). There is one minor problem with the proposal: who shall qualify the first member?
Alternative Three
Prospective members of SFWA shall be rated for literary quality by the members of SFRA, and ranked in order. The top 10% shall qualify for Active membership, and the rest shall be deemed Amateur Apprentices. Dues would be levied only on those in the bottom ranks, the absence of dues being one of the perquisites owed the true professionals in the field. Only those in the top 5% would be eligible for office.
Comment
The virtue of this plan is that it combines elitism with pseudo-literary values; indeed, under this proposal the organization should probably be renamed The Academy of Science-Fiction Self-Realization (ASS), to reflect its sublimely high (and enormously smug) literary standards. Only those sanctified by a presumably objective outside panel could join, and there would be no appeal, no messy qualification process: either you pass the litmus test—or you don’t!
Alternative Four
I hope the membership will give all of these proposals the consideration they truly deserve. In the meantime, it is sad to watch this noble organization die the death of a thousand knives. Whatever SFWA is, whatever it has been, whatever it will become after this interminable logorrhea finally subsides, we are all diminished by these seemingly endless internal squabbles. If we really
are
professionals, in any sense of the word, then why are we wasting our collective time on issues which were discussed at great length on several previous occasions? Have we truly nothing better to do? If the answer to the latter question is yes, then I submit to you that SFWA has already degenerated to the status of a fan group or social club, and is unworthy of any further support, at any level. My “final solution,” fellow SFWAns, is to dissolve the organization entirely, and retire to the bar, where most of us can usually be found anyway.
Dyspeptically Yours:
Robert Reginald