{"id":1525,"date":"2009-08-14T09:56:50","date_gmt":"2009-08-14T17:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/14\/bad-ideas-and-the-center-of-flimsy\/"},"modified":"2009-08-15T07:16:45","modified_gmt":"2009-08-15T15:16:45","slug":"bad-ideas-and-the-center-of-flimsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/14\/bad-ideas-and-the-center-of-flimsy\/","title":{"rendered":"“Bad Ideas” and the Center of Flimsy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day I mentioned being inspired by J. G. Ballard\u2019s autobiography, Miracles of Life<\/em>, in which he stresses that SF is the best way to write about the present. And while I was on the road, I took this dictum to heart (not for the first time), and started looking for things about society that I might transmogrify into gnarly SFnal objective correlatives.<\/p>\n


\n[Awesome giant graffiti mural in Kamloops, Canada.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Idea #1: living ideas. <\/em>The internet is still quite new and undigested, some fresh SF ways of treating it could be good. I\u2019ve discussed telepathy and a global mind in Postsingular <\/em> and Hylozoic<\/em>. But for this story, let\u2019s do something more literal and less scientific. I think of ideas that crawl around like slugs. And you can stomp on them. And get rid of the parts of yourself that you don’t like. Only then maybe some parasitic mind-virus slugs move in. Like propaganda and ads. Bad ideas. <\/p>\n


\n[Canadian flag over the Banff Springs Hotel.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Idea #2: dividing bodies. <\/em>Being in Canada, I got the feeling that the people there weren\u2019t as tense as my fellow citizens of the US. The US is plagued by a lot of unacknowledged conflicts and internal contradictions\u2014elephants-in-the-living-room relating to matters of class, income and race. (Radicals always talk about capitalism’s internal contradictions.)<\/p>\n

So then it struck me that it would be interesting if people started literally breaking up into pieces as the result of their contradictory ideas. Like your left arm secedes from your body, and then gets into internal squabbles with the fingers splitting off, and the arm dividing at the elbow. Due to some mysterious upgrade, your arm can live on its own, it can even grow an eye, a mouth, and a simple digestive tract. I can see using this effect for a kicker ending.<\/p>\n


\n[Kamloops, mon amour.]<\/em><\/p>\n

This week, I worked these ideas into a story called \u201cBad Ideas,\u201d\u009d for Flurb #8<\/em>, which will be out in mid September. God, it feels good to be writing again. I did have to fight the thought that I was writing this story for, in some sense, nothing\u2014that is, knowing that I\u2019d quixotically plan to put it straight into Flurb <\/em>without even trying to market it, even though it\u2019s of primo quality. But I also take some pleasure in doing this.<\/p>\n

Having been away from writing pretty much continuously for six weeks, I\u2019ve been missing the Muse very much. And yet, I spend so much time every day avoiding Her… <\/p>\n


\n[The next three pictures are at Moraine Lake in Banff National Park.]<\/em><\/p>\n

With the story done, I\u2019m edging into restarting my work on Jim and the Flims<\/em>. I look forward to doing something with that \u201cinfinity in the middle\u201d\u009d idea that I illustrated in that painting, \u201cTopology of the Afterworld.<\/a>\u201d\u009d I\u2019d needed another effect for the last few chapters, so I\u2019ll have a trip to the anomaly at the center, in order to save our Universe. Maybe I call that central spot Helaven, as I\u2019m not sure if it\u2019s Hell or Heaven. It will be interesting to have Jim fall through the divine light of infinity as way of getting back home\u2014although it has to be different from the somewhat similar scene in White Light. <\/em> More literal.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In Canada, Sylvia and I were boating on a little lake near Jasper, in the Canadian Rockies, a Pyramid Lake, with a big pyramid-like mountain peak right next to it, meadows and bogs and forests flowing gently up to the base of the stone, a lovely place. Our boat had a quiet electric motor, and we were gliding through some water no more than a foot or two deep, with water plants all around\u2014it reminded me of the sea in the Narnia novel, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, <\/em>which is a place that I always wanted to go. It crossed my mind that this would be a nice effect to have for when Jim is going to Helaven in the center of Flimsy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Naturally I think of a maelstrom around the central anomaly of Helaven\u2014but, gee, I just had a maelstrom in Hylozoic<\/em>. So calm shallow water is better. I might focus on the curious growths that appear in the shallow water. Mabye Jim has a realization that he\u2019s inside an electron? The afterworld is everywhere.<\/p>\n

More visually, I can see black-gloved cartoon hands on long, skinny, multiply-jointed arms, reaching out from Helaven and grabbing at Jim. Scabs and tattoos on the arms, with the zigzag sequence of elbows folding up like lazy-tongs.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight this way, sir.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day I mentioned being inspired by J. G. Ballard\u2019s autobiography, Miracles of Life, in which he stresses that SF is the best way to write about the present. And while I was on the road, I took this dictum to heart (not for the first time), and started looking for things about society […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}