Mars by 1980

David Stubbs Mars by 1980 (2018)
This is approximately the book I was hoping Paul Griffiths' Guide to Electronic Music would be, give or take some small change. As promised by the cover, it traces the history of the form from Russolo to the present, albeit with a fair bit of lateral waggle once we're past John Cage. Of course, the term electronic here encompasses plenty which isn't strictly electronic but which is at least progressive in forging an unorthodox path either at odds with, or at least adjacent to the mainstream. I suspect that any respectable attempt to cover this broad field will be obliged to take a subjective route if only for the sake of focus, which is what Stubbs does, and why his account succeeds for the most part.

Somehow this is the first time I've read about a great many of these people in this sort of detail, and the first thing I've read which has bothered to admit that Russolo's ambition - for one example - far outstripped his achievement. The reasonably lavish background detail on both Schaeffer and Stockhausen is also greatly appreciated, as is Stubb's reluctance to waste time and brain cells on Switched on fucking Bach. Of course, given the unashamedly subjective composition of this particular journey, I was left with at least a couple of questions. If Stubb's criteria for who made the cut depended on extent and spread of subsequent influence - which I suppose justifies the presence of Depeche bloody Mode - the relative absence of SPK, Hawkwind, vapourwave and more or less all rap music seems a little puzzling, although not enough so as to unbalance the whole.

The title refers to the historically Gernsbackian thrust of electronic music as something which looks to the future, a quality which might be deemed inherent to the exploratory nature of the form; then asks whether or not this is something we have lost in recent times. It's a good question, although I'm not convinced that it can have a single coherent answer, depending as it does on who and when we're asking. I personally suspect that there's something in Lawrence Miles' ghostpoint which proposes that innovation itself may have ceased for our culture, replaced by cyclical revision with each leap forward being no more significant than the latest smartphone - nothing but updates as far as the eye can see; but it's a pessimistic view and possibly works only as a rhetorical generalisation. Stubbs seems to conclude that the current standard bearers for electronic music demonstrate the same creative vitality as their ancestors, despite the increasing ubiquity of the form, and he's probably right.

The only problem I see with this account is that as an argument for the revolution remaining continuous, it hangs together, but only just, being stretched thin across a dizzyingly broad span of digressions and rabbit holes - all fascinating, but which tend to distract from the theme as a result; but this is a minor quibble which shouldn't really be taken as a complaint given that the journey seems to be the point here, and frankly it doesn't get much better than this.

I've always thought David Stubbs was a great writer, but this is exceptional beyond my expectations.

Fantastic Stories of Imagination September 1966

Sol Cohen (editor) Fantastic Stories of Imagination September 1966 (1966)
Having done my homework on this occasion, I've discovered that Cohen's time as editor of Fantastic was characterised by most of the stories in each issue being reprints, these presumably being cheaper than new material. Five of the seven in this issue are reprints, from what I can tell, and it's not looking great.

I actually plucked this one from the shelf upon seeing Murray Leinster's name on the cover, and while The Psionic Mousetrap isn't necessarily anything amazing, it isn't entirely lacking redeeming qualities. Similarly reprinted is August Derleth's Carousel. Derleth's contribution to the field as editor and publisher shouldn't be underestimated, and when the stars are aligned in a certain configuration, he's even been known to spin a decent yarn, but Carousel is unfortunately not one of them. It's not terrible, but you can pretty much tell how it's going to end before you're half way through the first paragraph. Swinging back to 1932, David H. Keller's No More Tomorrows doesn't make a whole lot of sense but is at least short, so most of your time is spent waiting for him to explain the guy with a massive head and just one eye, which he doesn't; and You Can't See Me! by William F. Temple is harmless, fairly stupid but not without a certain screwy charm.

A regrettably sizeable chunk of this issue is occupied by Eando Binder's The Little People dating from 1940. Eando Binder was a literary gestalt of brothers Earl Andrew and Otto Binder. They had a big hit with Adam Link, a robot character starring in a series of short stories, but whatever magic they may have pseudonymously wrought in issues of Amazing and others is not immediately obvious from The Little People. The Little People is forty leaden pages of science discovering real fairies on the grounds of Charles Fort having proven their existence beyond any doubt whatsoever because of all those myths and legends 'n' stuff blah blah evolution blah blah blah Eohippus was a tiny horse meaning that blah blah blah. It might be less annoying were it not written like Enid Blyton for adults, or at least Enid Blyton for older girls and boys, but mostly boys - although I read one of her Wishing Chair books a couple of years back as an experiment and Enid can be impressively weird in places, whereas this is just squaresville from beginning to end. Recidivist fairies, for example, are punished by reduction to what the Binder lads term woman-status, meaning their duties are limited to cooking and cleaning for a year. Even the illustrator apparently couldn't be arsed to read the thing all the way through, cladding his fairies in tiny versions of human clothes, contradicting the revelation of their captor, the evil scientist Dr. Scott, denying them such traditional fairy clobber.

Never mind.

Of the new material, there's Rocket to Gehenna by Doris Piserchia which I didn't read because it's one of those stories told as an exchange of correspondence, and I can't be doing with that shit. The other one is Roger Zelazny's For a Breath I Tarry - although it actually turns out to have first appeared in New Worlds six months earlier. Anyway, it's more of what I suppose must be Zelazny's customary science-fiction as pseudo-Buddhist parable, as was Lord of Light, but being significantly shorter is more easily digested and is actually pretty great. In fact, it's probably the best thing I've read of his which wasn't an attempt to make sense of Philip K. Dick.

So it's not a great average for this issue, but I guess a few decent efforts mostly cancel out the duds, although I still say The Little People was a barrel scraped too close to the grain.

Body to Job

Christopher Zeischegg Body to Job (2018)
I don't know how it's taken me so long to work out that The Magician wasn't actually Christopher Zeischegg's first, but better late than never, I suppose. It's two years since I read The Magician, but Body to Job inhabits similar territory from what I can recall, being grown from the same autobiographical soil without necessarily bringing forth the same fruit. Zeischegg was enough of a name in the porn industry to accrue fan mail, and Body to Job is about that. A few sections are obviously fictional, although there's otherwise no clear line drawn between reality and allegory, presumably on the grounds that certain events are better described as at least partially fictional. Honestly, it's not the sort of subject to which I'm ordinarily drawn, but Zeischegg is one hell of a writer.

I don't really have a problem with porn, my take being that I'm not entirely sure what I think about it, or even whether whatever I may think about it matters. I understand Andrea Dworkin's reasons for wanting it banned but, realistically speaking, I suspect this may be one genie that's never going back in the bottle; so I suppose beyond certain reforms, I simply believe it should be more difficult to access. On the other hand, I distrust sex work replacing older, apparently more offensive terms simply because I distrust grown men dressed as either ponies or little Japanese girls screaming whilst waving sex work is work placards, because I'm disinclined to enable debilitating psychological conditions, and because I don't actually recall anyone ever claiming that sex work wasn't work, one branch of which is reputed to be the world's oldest profession, after all. Anyway, Zeischegg seems attuned to where I'm coming from.

Neoliberal pundits whining about my job to earn ratings and book deals and spouting bullshit advocacy claims for people they'd never met pissed me off. So I decided to take a stance and balance out the conversation.

This is more or less what this book does, being the word of someone who has lived this stuff in detail - as distinct from simply having opinions; and so Body to Job is fascinating in describing territory quite unlike what I guess many of us had assumed was a map. His prose is tight, functional and efficient, delivering meaning without drowning everything in mood, adjectives, or anything surplus to requirements, because nothing described herein requires a melodramatic soundtrack telling you what to feel about what our guy is going through with his doomed porn shoots, gynecological misfires, and that endless line of strangers waiting to have sex, rip him off, or both. It takes skill to write with this level of precision, delivering meaning without dressing it up in bullshit; and it works and is refreshing given that bullshit is traditionally the means by which most porn is communicated, I would argue.

Body to Job isn't porn, although that's what it's about - not even the sort of joy of squalor variant you might expect of transgressive fiction - if we really have to use that term. On the contrary, Zeischegg's testimony borders on cheery, or at least amiable, regardless of what he's going through. The possibility of sunlight is implicit during even the darkest passages, and yet without turning it into just the sort of empowerment bollocks I was grumbling about two paragraphs back. There's even a comic undercurrent felt here and there, just like you have with real life.

'Okay,' she said. 'Carry on.'

'The name of my film is Death and Sports Bras.'

The professor shifted in her seat. 'I still don't understand. What are your characters' motivations in this story? Who is the protagonist?'

'Well, I've been listening to a lot of black metal. And I have this thing for sports bras. Because they look kind of like an androgynous, uh, futuristic uniform. But I guess that doesn't really answer your question.'

About half way through this novel, autobiography, collection, or however you chose to frame it, I realised Christopher Zeischegg doesn't actually remind me of any other writer that I've read, which is kind of a rare thing; and yet his voice is strong and distinctive which seems to make the lack of obvious parallels all the more unusual. It inhabits a world we probably take for granted, the oldest profession, cargo cult enactments of the most fundamental human transactions, the deed upon which most of our jokes are based, and Zeischegg reveals how little we really know, perhaps about anything. Who could have foreseen that something quite so profound could feature so much screwing?

Moon of Mutiny

Lester Del Rey Moon of Mutiny (1961)
I'm unlikely to ever push expectant mothers into oncoming traffic in order to get at a Del Rey I haven't read, and I didn't really have coherent plans to read any more, but this popped up in a crappy book sale - along with Nerves - and would have been pulped in the absence of a buyer, and somehow I just couldn't let that happen. It's another juvie, as might be surmised from the title and - as with a number of Lester's other juvies - stars a plucky young space cadet who brushes his teeth and doesn't want to disappoint dad - who happens to be a space general or something of the sort. This time it's young Fred Halpern who gets booted from the academy for failing to go by the book, and whose freewheeling ways somehow end up saving the day on the moon. It would be sheer arseache under any other circumstances, but Del Rey's writing is always a pleasure, and so much so that it's fairly easy to forget that you're almost reading Enid Blyton in terms of plot. Moon of Mutiny is hard science-fiction in the Asimov sense, and Del Rey communicates some truly peculiar ideas about rocketry and lunar geology without lecturing or jeopardising his popular touch; and as always, the hokey message you're probably expecting never quite materialises in familiar form, leaving us with a startlingly original rendering of a tale which probably would have been a waste of time with anyone else sat at the typewriter.