Rudy’s Blog

New York is so great. What an anthill. After a couple of days there, I could feel two spectral thoracic legs waving from my abdomen.

An artist was commissioned to erect a bunch of treehouses in Madison Square, the little park at Broadway and 23rd by the Flatiron Building. They’re very high up, on trees with smooth trunks—and the homeless people can’t climb up to them.

I always visit the Flatiron Building because my publisher, Tor Books, has their offices there. I first saw the building fifty years ago, when I was twelve. My father and I went to New York together, and he showed it to me, along with the Empire State Building. Odd to think that now I’m doing business there.

I love the big NYC buildings against the sky, and how they reflect each other. It’s a wonderland, a giant hall of mirrors.

It’s not accurate to view New Yorkers as uniformly gruff. Many of them are very friendly and talkative. And it takes very little to get a conversation going. As a result of seeing millions of people a year, the locals are anything but shy. They’re smooth, and they converse easily.

Our daughter Georgia happened to be in NYC as well, and she got us to go with her to see Camper van Beethoven play at the Bowery Ballroom, which is a little like the Fillmore, but about half as big, and somewhat seedier.

I’ve always loved Camper Van. They were big when we moved to California 25 years ago; Marc Laidlaw introduced me to their music. By now, the lead singer, David Lowry, reminds me of an eccentric old professor—fit, dedicated, and prepared to speak out. My twin. They sang their big hit, “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” [Click to see it on YouTube.] What a masterpiece.
“Last night I had a dream—it was about nothing.”

We saw a new play called Becky Shaw that was fun. Not a musical, you understand— more of a Noel Coward piece, but up-to-date. Tight, witty repartee for the dialog—the kinds of things you’d say if you had a week to ponder each line. The actors were attractive and professional. The Big Apple. We hit a couple of ballets and museums too. Vulturing the culture.

We saw our old friend Eddie Marritz. He’s a cinematographer who shoots still pictures when there’s spare time. He’s very old school in this regard—he uses a Leica M6 rangefinder camera with black and white film. He was telling me it’s important to take lots of pictures of a given scene to make sure you got the right one. And he comes up with great shots, so for sure this approach works for him.

I myself prefer the school of “think, watch, get ready, and just take the one or two perfect shots.” Like going squirrel-hunting with only two bullets in your pocket (not that I’ve ever gone squirrel-hunting, but I like the Kentucky metaphor). Or—better analogy—it’s like making each pop count when you have only twelve firecrackers to set off, as was often the case when I was a boy.

I suppose I imprinted on a conservative photo-shooting approach when I was an impecunious young man making pictures on film. And now I like to imagine that if get deeply enough into the process, merging with the camera and with the view, I can feel the right picture without actually having to shoot the wrong ones. Alternately, I sometimes think that one picture is as good as another anyway—each has its own magic.

[Tribal paintings that are massed to make a ceiling near New Guinea.]

This said, now that I’m using digital now, I do go for a “do-over” sometimes. That is, I look at my shot on the camera’s little screen, and then I reshoot right away if the image seems badly lit, or poorly framed, or out of focus in the wrong spot. And it’s also the case, that I Photoshop nearly every one of my pictures, tweaking the lighting and framing—and this is another reason why I don’t necessarily need a “perfect” shot.

In NYC, I also saw a young writer I know from publishing two of his excellent stories in Flurb, Brendan Byrne. Brendan’s taking a little time off from work (most recently he was a bartender at McSorley’s) to focus on writing. He’s hoping to write a couple of novels during his personal sabbatical. Go for it, Brendan!

I advised Brendan to be sure and try writing an SF novel as well. In my (possibly mistaken) opinion, it’s easier to get a novel published as SF than as mainstream literature. Not that the lit-biz is booming on any front. My editor, David Hartwell, says nobody’s sure what’s going to happen next.

But I never worry too much when I hear bad news about publishing. I’ve been writing and publishing for about thirty years now, and I think that during each one of those 30 years, someone has told me that times have never been worse in publishing. Especially in SF publishing!

In any case, writing SF is something I like to do.
“I know it’s only rock and roll—but I like it.”

In this connection, I like to imagine being this sculpture of Herakles, I can relate to how he’s evolved into our present time.
“Wal, I’ve still got my torso—and some of my toes.”
The guy sitting beside Herakles is sketching him on a pad. It must be great to be an NYC artist and go sketching and painting things in the Met.

Today it’s 75 degrees in San Jose, California, and 3 degrees in New York. Like two different planets, almost.

I was in the good old Museum of Modern Art in New York last week, the real MOMA. On the fifth floor they have modern art from 1880 – 1940, on the fourth floor the art from 1940- 1970, and on the second floor the contemporary art.

I prefer the fifth floor, that is, the early modernist stuff. The thing is, I prefer paintings, with colors, and without words written on them.

Pop Art does have colors, but as the decades go by, most of the work looks increasingly thin—although, to my eye, Rosenquist still holds up. The post-Pop artist Basquiat still looks pretty good, although, again, at least for me, any painting with words written on it is less interesting that it would have been without the words. And Philip Guston is still great, and even Rothko holds up, if you give him time to sink in.

There are some great contemporary artists as well, but none of seemed to be on display in the MOMA last week. All they had was the middle range of contemporary art. In the future, I can’t imagine that anyone at all will be looking at these beige, white, and gray works. There’s no eye candy, no thought or too much thought, and little evidence of craft or sustained effort.

[Detail of Vincent van Gogh, "L'Arlesienne"]

Why has Western art gone in this direction? One factor is our capitalist conception that last year’s model is obsolete, and this year’s model has to seem new and different. We take this for granted. But keep in mind that other cultures are comfortable with having artists and craftsmen stick to certain standard forms, continually refining and improving on what’s gone before. Would it be so bad to try and paint like Picasso or van Gogh or Thiebaud? Or maybe some people are doing that, and the fire just isn’t there?

The down side of the traditionalist slow refinement model is that you end up with, like, a museum filled with paintings of the Crucifixion, or with endless calligraphic scroll paintings of mountain trees in fog.

But, as I was saying, the down side of innovation for innovation’s sake is that you end up discarding too many valid modes of artistic expression. And somehow—I’m not sure why—you end up with beige, brown, and black paintings with words on them. And little piles of garbage here and there. “Sculptures.”

Of course Tom Wolfe said all this years ago in his 1975 book The Painted Word. Nobody listened to the old fuddy-duddy.

Is there another path for new art other than discarding everything that was good about painting? Well, sure, you can use entirely new media. And this is where video art, or interactive computer art comes to the fore.

Generally I don’t like video art—it takes a long time to look at it, and it makes noise that spills over into the other parts of the museum, unfairly weakening the effects of the other works of art on display.

But at the MOMA I did see a very impressive video piece by Pipilotti Rist at the MOMA—I’ve seen her work before. She’s cool.

[Detail of a Metropolitan Museum of Art painting by Vincent van Gogh]

But nobody touches Vincent.

Another picture story today—I have a lot of photos on hand to use up…

A striped space capsule appeared at the end of my dining table.

And a little lady stepped out.

She led me to a Magic Door.

And she opened the lock.

Her husband was inside, with a stony head like hers.

The enemy robots were attacking.

So I hid inside a sidewalk crack.

I found a floating piece of thistledown there.

And I rode it all the way home.

Today’s news: The io9 site has listed Postsingular as one of the Best SF Books of 2008!

And now for a photo story…

The other day, I was walking by a curved glass sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, and I noticed this intersecting pattern of bright reflections on the ground. These are what scientists call “caustic curves,” because the heat along these lines can grow burning hot.

I stepped into the caustic focus and the gravitational field warp made me as wide as I am tall.

A crow showed me the way to a new land.

The kingdom lay inside the gills of a shelf mushroom.

Shrunken to minute size, I followed a long, winding forest trail into the subdimensions.

Part of the way was uphill, overlooking a landscape of bokeh pastels.

I found the subbies’ great gathering place.

And I glimpsed the Topknotted Sphere.

I pricked up my ears to receive Her wisdom.

The Topknotted Sphere’s voice spoke to me as if from within my own blood.

I learned the secret machinery of the world.

So I can hear the music of a roofline.

And I can see inside the trunks of trees.

Happy New Year!

I always like to think about the mathematical properties of each new year’s number.
2009 = 49 x 41 = 7^2 x (5^2 + 4^2), where “^2” means squared.

So in plain words:
Two thousand and nine is seven squared times five squared plus four squared.

And now a message from our sponsor…

I got my first printed copies of my new art book, Better Worlds the other day. It looks really nice, better than I expected. You can order your own printed copy for $29.99. I blogged more about this in my “Better Worlds” post a couple of weeks ago.

Onward into the year!

As I mentioned in my post on “Starting Jim and the Flim,” I’m thinking of writing another SF novel that includes some UFO elements.

My blogger friend Mac Tonnies responded with a couple of links to posts relating to SF UFO novels. The first is a piece, “UFOs and Science Fiction” discussing the relative scarcity of UFOs in contemporary SF novels.

I do remember reading some SF UFO tales as a boy, that is, about fifty years ago, although at that time, the subtext of the stories was the American fear of Communism and Soviet attack. More recently, Ian Watson’s Miracle Visitors, John Shirley’s Silicon Embrace, and my own Saucer Wisdom are among the very few modern SF UFO novels.

In order to have something to discuss, I think we should distinguish between, on the one hand, SF UFO novels and, on the other hand, alien invasion novels along the lines of, say, Greg Bear or Larry Niven. I think, for instance, Neal Stephenson’s recent Anathem, is more of an alien invasion novel, although it’s close to being an SF UFO novel as well.

How to characterize the sought-for genre of the SF UFO novel? I’d say the essence of an SF UFO novel is point (a) below. Points (b) through (f) all follow from (a).

(a) The novel includes flying saucer alien encounters similar to those described in lowbrow tabloid newspapers, but is neither ignorantly credulous nor mockingly parodistic.
(b) The aliens use a fuzzy technology that might amount to psychic powers. The saucers, in other words, aren’t machines.
(c) The aliens are surreptitiously observing or infiltrating Earth rather than overtly invading—at least for now.
(d) We have some creepy human/alien sex acts.
(e) The aliens aren’t necessarily evil, they may be bringing enlightenment and transcendence.
(f) The aliens might be from somewhere other than a distant planet, that is, they might come from small size scales, from a parallel world, or might be made of some impalpable substance like dark matter.

Part of the game in writing an SF UFO novel is making up scientific reasons why the tabloid-level UFO phenomenon could in fact relate to something real—although certainly it’s fair to mention in mind that many of the people who encounter aliens are stoned or mentally ill.

Coming back to Mac Tonnies again, in his 2005 post, “Alien Visitation: A Global Quantum Event?” Mac discusses the notion that the aliens might in some sense require a human’s presence in order to manifest themselves.

Thus, the fact that there are never any unobserved UFOs could indicate not that the UFOs are human hallucinations, but rather that a human presence supplies a kind of bridge or beacon that allows the aliens to project some visible form into our reality. Note that you can use this move without having to get into the mysto steam of quantum mechanics which is, I feel, a vein that’s been somewhat overworked.

The tone and intention are also essential in distinguishing an SF UFO novel.

One the one hand, if the book is serious, exhortatory, or paranoid, then you’re not getting the SF part. You’re writing a kind of True Believer recruitment tract running a kind of scam, and those motives get in the way of novelistic art. This said, it should be possible to write a great SF UFO novel that does in fact have that intense, paranoid tone—in some ways Phil Dick’s exemplary Valis is this kind of book.

On the other hand, if the author goes for every joke in sight, you end up with something more like the Hitchhiker’s Guide novels by Douglas Adams. This kind of work has its own appeal and its own audience—but it’s not what I’m thinking about when I talk about my vision of an SF UFO novel. I want something a little heavier, a little deeper.

Not that an SF UFO novel has to be sober-sided and portentious. My personal inclination is to leaven my books with a certain amount of satire and dark humor—and John Shirley and Ian Watson do this too. For instance, the aliens in Shirley’s Silicon Embrace are heavy smokers. And the main character in my Saucer Wisdom really is a true-believing UFO nut—who just happens to be right.

The world really is stranger than we as yet understand. Tying our dreams of cosmic exploration to government-made machines is like expecting to ride a sailing ship or a hot air balloon to Mount Olympus. The door might be closer than you think. Rabid knows.

On December 23, 2008, during the big family Christmas reunion at our house, I had a few spare minutes and managed to write a kind of start for my next novel, with working title Jim and the Flim. I pasted together some bits that I liked from some SF warm-up raps that I wrote this summer while I was still getting ready to write my memoir—see, for instance, my blog posts, “Cow Liver Goddess Satori,” and “Novels as Memoirs.”)

I put the material into the past tense and changed the parts that were first person to third person, though I may yet flip back to first person. And now I’m smoothing the material and revising it, and thinking about how to complicate it into a novel. I can feel a little pulse, it’s coming to life.

The main character Jim Oster lives with a woman, Weena Wesson, whom he believes to be an otherworldly being called a flim. The flim mind is embedded in a body that she’s grown from a cow liver. Jim and Weena are seedy older people living in Santa Cruz. I’m looking for a Dickian tone this time out, with the tech pretty simple and some what-is-reality elements.

I’d like the reader to believe, initially, that Jim Oster is mistaken in his belief that Weena is an alien flim inside a cow liver. But I think by the end of the first or the second chapter we learn that he’s not nuts—for if he were, we wouldn’t have much of an SF novel, would we?

Why is Weena living in a tweaked cow liver? Well, mainly I’m goofing off the traditional notion of UFO cattle mutilations. But I want a science reason to explain it. Suppose that the flims can’t physically come here unless they’re in one of those spacetime regions where our mundane world and the Flimland happen to overlap. When the worlds are separate, a flim can nevertheless project their personality information into a piece of mundane host matter. And for some mumble-mumble science reason, a cow liver is very suitable. If carried out fully and for a long period of time, the flim’s astral projection kills the flim’s original body. Weena makes this sacrifice as she has an important mission in the mundane world.

What is the mission? This has to do with my theory about where the flims are from. Note that I’m not interested in having the flims come from distant stars or planets, that whole concept feels hackneyed and boring. I want them to come from right here, like nature spirits.

A standard way of explaining otherworldly beings is to suppose that they live on a universe parallel to ours, and they are able to reach over into our world or even hop back and forth. Like from the astral plane. But I want a sense of the flims being essentially embedded in our world—like elves or ghosts. So I want a more intimate connection than a some parallel world, something more integrate than alternate sheet of spacetime that’s stuck to ours like a protective plastic sheet stuck to the viewscreen of a new digital camera. If there’s any fixed, uniform distance between the two hyperplanes of reality, the worlds are separate, even if the distance is a mere Planck length.

So I’ll suppose that, yes, flims live in a parallel spacetime, but that their astral plane and our mundane plane are in fact precisely the same in many spacetime regions. I think of an astral veneer that’s irregularly delaminating from a mundane tabletop. At certain places and times, the world of the flims is identical with our quotidien reality, in other spots their reality sheet bulges up. I suppose that the bulge pattern is, like any other naturally occurring shape, a chaotic fractal.

If we go with the delaminated sheets model, we can have the traditional fantasy notion of there being certain times and lands where “the elves are real.” Locales where Flimland and our mundane world are one and the same. And the action of my book has to do with a Return Of The Magic. We’re about to pass into an era when the flims are fully visible to us all the time, and the astral and the mundane worlds are one.

Do the flims welcome the impending unification? I think not, no more so than will the conservative elements of our own society. Let’s suppose that the elvish flims are green and Earth-nurturing. They won’t relish being merged into a world full of real estate developers, gross polluters, and shopping malls. Weena’s mission is to try and reform humanity a little before the worlds merge. And it may be that Jim’s mission is to teach the flims to love us.