#Tom Disch

[havingapoemwithyou]

may by Tom Disch

[boricuacherry-blog]

The Doppelganger, Tom Disch

[polyanthea]

Such beauty, you say Let us stop & admire A moment, a day The fields & the fire

God the great spider Has caught you again

-Tom Disch, “May”

[grandhotelabyss]

I think I mostly gave good reviews to everything in the genre I’ve written about, but you’re right that something in me hesitates. 

I grew up with the genre. Influences still linger from my childhood: Heinlein sparked my interest in the literature of ideas, Bradbury turned me toward aesthetic prose, and Ellison modeled the writer as pugnacious public force. (Asimov and Clarke didn’t interest me then, just as Kim Stanley Robinson doesn’t interest me now. I’ve never cared about actual science, except maybe for the very idea of theoretical physics, which, sans the math, just returns us to speculative philosophy anyway.) I discovered Dick, Delany, Le Guin, Gibson, Ballard, and Butler later, mostly in college; I even interviewed China Miéville once—circa Iron Council—but didn’t keep up with his career after that. I love Tom Disch’s acerbic and more-than-apprehensive history of the genre, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, a real essay in the old liberalism equally dismissive of Heinlein’s Kiplingesque militarism and Le Guin’s Rousseauist pacifism. He would, had he lived, have made a good anti-woke pundit. I still haven’t read his fiction.

While science fiction and fantasy both get dumped in the “genre” bin with romance and detective novels, they are infinitely freer genres, since the conceit of imagined futures, imagined worlds, imagined technologies, or imagined aliens makes no plot demands in the way that romance and detective novels require certain story structures, however subverted. In that way, science fiction isn’t a genre at all but a mode (related to satire and utopia) requiring that other genres be grafted on to create a novel proper, whether noir (Neuromancer), historical romance (Dune), boys’ adventure (Starship Troopers), slave narrative (Kindred), imperial romance (The Left Hand of Darkness), etc. You can do (almost) anything in science fiction.

Yet “related to satire and utopia” is the catch: the source of my hesitation. There is something irreducibly ideological in the genre, “ideological” not in the Marxist sense of “hidden structuring assumptions that uphold vested interests” but in the liberal sense of “willful and reductive systematic reasoning.” Why would anyone imagine a future, a world, a technology, an alien, if not to make a point? Science fiction by its nature has “a palpable design upon us.” Some writers can use this to advantage, as in Solaris, a genuinely searching essay, but the risk of didacticism is sky high.

You can’t write a novel in the Jamesian sense—a shaped record of inner sensibility encountering outer experience in the present—within science fiction, because it asks for the totality of your views on nature and society up front without letting them emerge slowly from the artistic process itself and therefore surprise you as much as the reader. I have tried to write science fiction as an adult, and every time, I bog down in exposition, losing myself in the composition of a political treatise before I can meet a character or see a sight. My own lack of capacity should be blamed first, but not solely. So if I ever seem to think science fiction per se falls short of art, that would be the reason. 

[thecolourrainbow]

Fiction

Carrie stephen king x

the silence of the lambs Thomas harris x

The big nowhere James ellroy x

Speedboat Renata adler

Giovanni's room James Baldwin x

Nightwood djuana barnes x

Troutfishing in America Richard brautigan x

Play as it lays joan didion x

Desperate characters Paula fox

The golden notebook Doris lessing

The moviegoer walker Percy

The man who loved children Christina stead

Time with children elizabeth tallent

Getting into death Thomas m. Disch

Where you'll find me and other stories anne bettie

God lives in st Petersburg Tom bissell

The zebra storyteller Spencer holt

The art of struggle Michel houellebecq

The boat nam le

Pigeon feathers and other stories john Updike

Everything ravaged, Everything burned wells tower

What narcism means to me Tony hoagland

Pity the bathtub it's embrace of human form mattea Harvey

Foucalt's pendulum Umberto eco

The canterville ghost Oscar wilde x

Los sorias Alberto laiseca

Pandemonium Darryl gregory

Hopscotch Julio cortazar

Igur nebli miquel de palol I muntanyola

Journey to the end of the night louis-ferdinand Celine

Point omega Don dellilo

Black Sunday Thomas harris

El jardi dels set crepuscles Miguel de palol I muntanyola

The street of crocodiles Bruno Schultz

Tabu Timo k. Mukka

Don't forget to breathe (migrations, volume I) ashim Shankar

El troiacord Miguel de Pollo I muntanyola

The egg head republic Arno schmidt

Rock star Jackie Collins

The lost scrapbook evan dara

Geek love Katherine dunn

Parley after life diy guide to death and other taxes Bobby Miller

God's mountain erri de Luca

Precarious: stories of love, sex and misunderstanding al riske

Where are the children mary Higgins Clark

Gryphon: new and selected story Charles baxter

Venus drive Sam lipsyte

The girl in the flammable skirt aimme bender

The chrysanthemums and other stories john Steinbeck

A clean well lighted place Ernest Hemingway

To build a fire and other stories jack london

Why I live at the p.o and other stories Eudora Welty

Appointment in sammara john O'Hara

Man in the dark Paul auster

The rocking horse winner d.h Lawrence x

House of sleeping beauties and other stories yasunari kawabata

Time's arrow martin amis

Blubber island Guillermo galvan

Darconville's cat Alexander theroux

Canti del caos Antonio moresco

Sam Dunn is dead: futurist novel Bruno corra

Lonesome dove Larry mcmurtry

[hum2020blogtv]

Poetic License

Link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=37090

After looking for a poem on the Poetry Foundation website, the one I chose is "Books" by Billy Collins. The narrator describes an empty College campus by using imagery. For example, the narrator starts by saying, "From the heart of this dark, evacuated campus, I can hear the library humming in the night..." It continues by mentioning the books on the shelves and the " immense chair of authors muttering inside their books."

The author lists classic literature authors such as Giovanni Pontano and others. Indicating the different genres that exist. What really caught my attention is the description of a "Figure so immersed in a book, "a man in two worlds, meaning that reading takes him to his book's world. He is so focused that "he moves from paragraph to paragraph as If touring a house of endless, paneled rooms." It is like time stops or does not exist when the man reads. This is relatable because when I read the same thing happens to me, it is like time does not exist and takes me to a different world.

The first two stanzas of this poem have a curious and mysterious tone, and then, in the following paragraphs, it changes to a nostalgic one. The man takes the narrator back to his childhood or memories of the narrator's mother reading to them when they were a kid. It makes me understand that reading has always been an important part of the narrator's life and continues to be. Afterward, It goes back to the present, where the narrator is "building bookshelves in college" and describes how we usually "read ourselves away from ourselves." Collins does a good job putting into words what most readers feel when reading something they love and enjoy or simply when trying to take a break from the real world.

Last, From my point of view, the themes of this poem are escapism and nostalgia.

[lif3byjason]

Poetic License

After reviewing and selecting the right poem that conveyed my feelings about the aspect of life itself or a generalization on how life itself can feel, the poem that I selected for my synopsis is one by Aram Saroyan titled "Life is a dream." The overall theme of this piece is that despite life being prevalent, it could also be imaginative. For example, in the second stanza, a metaphoric device is utilized to express the author's imagination. The author conveys this message powerfully as this represents his mind as it wanders into the distance of their imaginative thoughts. Another example of a metaphoric device utilized is the sixth stanza, where the author describes a child's emotion to the likeness of burning wood. A child's emotions are strong, and they express themselves in totality like a raging fire holding no feeling back, whether happiness or sadness. The diction applied in this piece with the author's use of comparisons of things and relating them to certain aspects of reality. Figuratively connecting reality with imagery, additionally and ironically, the last stanza kills the youthful interpretation the piece conveyed. The author utilizes two opposite words, which ironically are closely connected. Ultimately, despite our ability to help us cope with such a dull atmosphere, reality as we see it is inevitable and inescapable. I felt that towards the end of the piece, the author became more raw and honest with his thoughts and explained his imagination and perspective on the aspect of life that revealed itself.

[ineedtoreadmorepoetry]

The Crumbling Infrastructure by Tom Disch

A limb snaps, the hive is smashed, and the survivors Buzz off to colonize another neck of the woods. No nest is sacrosanct. Abandoned churches may serve A while as discotheques. Steel towns may hope To be retooled to meet the needs of foreign banks Anxious to reinvest evaporating capital Beyond the reach of ruin. But generally decay’s The aftermath of desuetude. Rome, What’s left of it, falls to the Hun, and all Its noble plumbing is undone. The fountains Of Versailles run dry, and the Bourbons are remembered As a lower-class alternative to Scotch. In all these matters money rules, but not as the sun, Benign, inscrutable, and far away, but as a river would, Collating the waters of a hundred townships, Tolerant of dams, a source of wonder and a force Even the Federal Reserve cannot coerce. Basements flood, canoeists (i.e., small investors) Drown, and nothing can be done about the mosquitoes, But on the whole one does well to dwell in the valley. Money, like water, yields an interest hard to deny. Every dawn brings new quotations in the pages Of the Times; every sunset gilds the thought of death As though it were the mummy of a king. Then is every man an Emerson, Aghast at the everlasting, wild with surmise, His daily paper dewy with the news Of history’s long, slow slouch toward That Götterdämmerung dearest to pulp Illustrators: Liberty’s torch thrust up, Excalibur-like, from the sands of a new Sahara Or the waves of a new flood, her bronze flame All that remains of Babylon. A pretty sight-- But meanwhile Liberty’s toes are dry, bridges And tunnels still traversible, and someone had better Be paid to patch these goddamn potholes, that’s all I’m trying to say, because if they’re not, Someone’s going to break and axle, and it could be one of us.

[defyinggod]

I knew him. I loved him. I sat at his feet.

— Tom Disch

[biblioklept]

"Villanelle for Charles Olson" -- Tom Disch

“Villanelle for Charles Olson” — Tom Disch

[hallohartje]

Tom Disch (1972), “The Prisoners of War”.

“Their language disappeared a year or so / after a landscape: so what can they do now / but point?”

[batgovernor]

Odd Poems: Thomas M. Disch, 'A Child's Garden of Grammar'

Odd Poems: Thomas M. Disch, ‘A Child’s Garden of Grammar’

Thomas M. Disch (1940-2008) was a New Wave Science Fiction author, poet, theater critic, computer game designer, and much else. Not surprising, then, that his Grammar is a strange book. Sadly, it’s not really informative for either the grammar-beginner (it’s too obscure) or the grammar-expert (there’s nothing new). It has odd poems, some nice and simple like ‘Either/Or’:

Either and Or came to…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Unauthorized water

It's not clear when General Electric started boobytraping appliances with DRM. I first encountered it in January when Shane Morris tweeted about his fridge refusing to accept the $19 generic filter he replaced the GE $55 filter with.

https://twitter.com/IamShaneMorris/status/1220367934947758080

The fridges use an RFID detector to distinguish original GE filters from generic replacements, and engage in lots of anti-owner trickery, like memorizing the IDs of previously used filters and refusing to accept them.

https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/unauthorized-charcoal-ge-fridges-wont-dispense-ice-or-water-unless-your-filter-authenticates-as-an-official-55-component/159552/41

Morris isn't the only one ourtaged that his fridge is plotting against him. One (anonymous) owner was so offended that they created a site dedicated to warning off potential buyers and explaining to other suckers how to bypass GE's lockouts.

https://gefiltergate.com/

There's a good reason for the anonymity. Under Sec 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, showing how to bypass an "access control" to a copyrighted work (eg RFID-detecting code in the fridge) is a potential felony, carrying a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine.

This is quite the moral hazard. Manufacturers have learned that if they design their products so that any use that hurts their shareholders (like buying third party parts) requires bypassing DRM, it becomes a felony to use your own property to your own advantage.

Which is why we've seen DRM creep into all manner of devices, from insulin pumps to tractors to car engines to Iphone screens. "Felony contempt of business model" is the statute that every monopolist has dreamt of, and with DMCA 1201, they have it in their grasp.

Back in 2011, I wrote a short story about this for MIT Tech Review's first sf anthology, called "The Brave Little Toaster" (in tribute to Tom Disch).

https://craphound.com/news/2011/09/28/the-brave-little-toaster-from-trsf/

The issue only got worse, and so last year I published "Unauthorized Bread" as part of my collection "Radicalized" (it's being turned into a TV show by Topic):

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

The metastasis of DRM into every product category shows that when business apologists talk about the sanctity of property, they mean the sanctity of CORPORATE property.

If the manufacturer gets to override your decisions about the things you buy - and felonize any attempt to wrest control back - they property ceases to exist. We become tenants of our devices, not owners.

It's digital feudalism, in which an elite owns all the property and we get to use it in ways they proscribe. The difference is that today, our aristocracy isn't even human.

It's the immortal, remorseless colony organism called the Limited Liability Corporation, to which we are mere inconvenient gut flora.

[nevver]

Tom Disch

[ralafferty]

A Lafferty Christmas Poem

Below you will find a previously unpublished—indeed, previously unsuspected—Lafferty poem. I found it while looking through files at the Virginia Kidd Agency, specifically folders on Kidd’s speculative poetry zine, Kinesis.

While it only lasted for three issues, Kinesis published or republished work from Ursula K. Le Guin, Tom Disch, Damon Knight, Joanna Russ, Gene Wolfe, Carol Emshwiller, and James Blish among others...as well as one Raphael Aloysius Lafferty. I knew that much going in, and was able to confirm his contributions (which have never been reprinted elsewhere) to two of the zine’s issues.

What I didn’t know is that Kidd had gathered enough material for at least two more issues of Kinesis, but was unable to bring them out after her mimeograph machine broke down and other concerns crowded out her zine-making time. She held out hope for a while (and that’s a story I’ll tell another time) but in this context the upshot is a fine poem from Lafferty going unread for 45 years or so.

I don’t know whether he meant the poem as a submission, or if he just wrote it to her as occasional verse, and she seized upon it. There’s no carbon in Lafferty’s archive relating to the poem or indicating its existence in any way; if there’s anything in the Kidd Archives, they’ll have to surface as the materials gradually make their way to the University of Oregon, to join the collections of Le Guin, Russ, et al.

Anyway, I’ll leave further analysis of it to others, for now. Hope you enjoy, and that your own Christmas, season, and holidays are merry and bright.

Image follows:

Transcribed text:

THIS IS A CHRISTMAS CARD (I’d draw Christmas things on it if I could draw)

To the air of YES, SANTA CLAUS, THERE IS A VIRGINIA

Of trumpet-lightning and a womb that lept for us One promise made for us and ever kept for us

(Behold a man a-waiting in Jerusalem Named Simeon and older than Methusalem) —

One Central Thing, before the Day-Star, cited yet The Word that lights the world, and it be lighted yet.

An incandescence in the human mesh of us, We be illuminated in the flesh of us.

We are no islands, we are very isthmuses All of one Main, the nexuses our Christmases.

R.A.L.

(My thanks to the Lafferty Estate folks at Locus for granting permission for me to reproduce this poem, and to the good people at the Virginia Kidd Agency for once again letting me invade their workspace and root through their archives.)

[thisisnthappiness]

Tom Disch