From: mwasson@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Michael Wasson)
Subject: Re: Debil Postmoderns Cyberpunk
Organization: University of Hawaii
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 23:40:54 GMT

In article <1992Aug27.142159.28660@math.ucla.edu> dstein@rhea.math.ucla.edu (David Stein) writes:
[lots of stuff about postmodernism]
>    My question, then, is whether there are any science fictional
>works that may be reasonably termed postmodern.  In particular, I 
>would like to know if there is any connection between Cyberpunk 
>or _The Movement_ and postmodernism.  

One feature of PoMo seems to be an emphasis on meta-texts. ie, the
process of producing the text is commented on within the text ...
examples might include Pynchon's fragmenting narratives (_Gravity's
Raingbow_), Burrough's cut-up method (and commentaries thereon) and
Acker's plagiarisms.

examples in S/F:

PKDick's _Man in the High Castle_. The novel is about alternate time-lines,
but also about the fictional construction of alternate time-lines. There is
a novel within the novel, written in a world where the Allies lost the
war about what would have happened if the Allies had *won* the war--but
the fictional author's version doesn't match our own world, which calls
into question the fiction that Dick himself has created. 
	A lot of other Dick is about the falsity of narratives, eg,
_The Penultimate Truth_ and _Time Out of Joint_

JGBallard's _Atrocity Exhibition_. The narrative explodes in a way 
reminiscent of WSB or Pynchon. One of the themes running through the
book is the use of technical and medical language, a type of "narrative"
traditional literature hasn't usually seen fit to examine. As a post-modern
document, the Re/Search re-issue of this book is even more interesting
because it incorporates Ballard's notes as marginalia; in this way
the book continually comments on itself. 
	Ballard talks a great deal about the "death of affect," 
caused by the constant imitations of true emotion that appear in 
soap operas, presidential speeches, and "high" literature ... you
could relate this to Eco's point that the phrase "I love you madly"
can only be uttered ironically in a post-modern culture. Ballard,
incidently, believes that S/F is literature's last hope in this 
regard. 

Stanislaw Lem: His more experimental books (_Perfect Vaccuum_, _One
Human Minute_) might be considered post-modern in that they subvert
traditional (non-literary) forms of writing, such as book reviews,
scientific essays, and prefaces to other (imaginary) books.

S.Delany: The Neveryone series. IMHO these are pretty dull (and
I respect Delany a great deal) but they're po-mo in this sense:
Delaney realizes that Sword&Sorcercey is something of an
impoverished genre, a bastard child of S/F&F [Conan fans, no flames
pleeeeze:-)], and he incorporates this self-conscious realization
into the stories.

J. Russ: _The Female Man_ is an alternative-time-line novel written
specifically as an anti-novel and a political statement. Somewhere
toward the end, the narrator concludes that if the book becomes dated
and unread, then it will have done its job. The narrator is self-
consciously (and ironically) aware of art's limitations.
	In _The Two of Them_ she negates about a chapter's worth
of narrative by abruptly stating "No, that didn't happen. I made that up"
[or something like that] and then continuing the story without those
developments, a technique which makes the reader aware (perhaps 
uncomfortably) that a novel is, after all, just something somebody
made up.

There will be a quiz.   :-)

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