A new zine from Arthur Hlavaty

Lots of nice content can be found in "Nice Distinctions 33," the new zine (after three years) issued by Arthur Hlavaty. I'm on his email list, but you can go grab your own own digital copy easily enough. (If you get hooked, see the Hlavaty zine archive. )

Much of the zine has an kind of amusing grumpiness about it, as when he says "I  never liked golf. It's not a major problem for me, at worst taking up space on the sports page for some reason." Or when he says he stopped listening to new music 45 years ago. (Doing the math suggests he stopped in 1975. Is it too late to turn him on to 1980s Tom Petty and Elvis Costello? I knew a guy in Lawton, Oklahoma, who thought classical music went bad in about 1775.)

But the jokes also merge into thoughtful content, as when he reviews two books about the "golden age" of science fiction, or writes pithy obituaries, here are two I liked but the others are worth reading too:

Justin Raimondo quite seriously described himself as the #1 gay supporter of Pat Buchanan (he admitted there was not a lot of competition), but that was not the whole story. I have abandoned the hope of having a society without a few elements controlled by a legitimized armed gang, but I still have a lot of sympathy for libertarianism, not just sex&weed&dirty books but two other good ideas: 1) distrusting the cops. Radley Balko proudly upholds that one, now more liberals are noticing, and that may be the one element of vestigial libertarianism in Rand Paul's makeup. 2) staying out of Asian wars. Going back to Woodrow Wilson and continuing today there is the allegedly liberal doctrine that democracy is so wonderful that we must impose it everywhere no matter how many people we have to kill. Justin Raimondo and antiwar.org stood up to that idea. 

Paul Krassner was the first great corrupting influence in my life. _The Realist_ introduced me to Robert Anton Wilson and Albert Ellis, among others, and he himself commented incisively on the follies of our times. In the 70s he went through paranoia and came out the other side. I always sent him my zines, and one of the high points of my writing life was being quoted in _The Realist_.

RAW 'worst' book? Fans weigh in!

[My initial posting on the new release of The New Inquisition prompted an unusual discussion of what Robert Anton Wilson's worst book is. I'll repost Supergee's comment that began the discussion, post excerpts of other comments and then weigh in myself -- the Management.]

Supergee: To me this is RAW’s worst book: hectoring, clanking with pig irony, unselective in its examples, giving aid & comfort to those who say that when Dr. Fauci discusses viruses, that’s just his eddication talking. But it finishes with a marvelous discussion of how we perceive.

Eric Wagner: I love this book. Bob loved science, but he wanted to apply the scientific method to science itself.

Iain Spence: Once again Hilaritas Press have managed to collapse the price of an old RAW title down to 12 pounds. Some people were coughing up 30+ quid for old dog eared copies of these in the UK. Thank you once again to the dedicated team.
I think Mr Wilson had a bee in his bonnet about the worst excesses of scientific materialism rather than science itself. So it seems like he gets a bit carried away in this volume? I'm intrigued by the comments here...and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Inigo Montoya: I don't think it is his worst book. Among the nonfiction, both Coincidance and Email to the Universe are worse, a mishmash of b-grade and c-grade stuff. (And Moore's intro to the former is dreadful in my view -- and it is clear he never read Korzybski, or if he did, he didn't understand what he was reading. That's the only way I can explain the line "Count Alfred Korzybski’s work implies that almost all human experience is linguistic in its nature..." Whaa? Anyway...)

Among his nonfiction, the Cosmic Trigger books, Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology are his best, I'd say. I would rank this book after those, but above the Coincidance and Email... I think the first chapter is terrific -- it's RAW in all his agnostic glory. The book gets tedious though as it goes on... and RAW piles up example after example (often not persuasive) a la some kind of modern Charles Fort... but I find I skim over those and still find little RAW gems throughout... The tone it's also a bit shrill for him, which may contribute to the negative vibe around the book.

I think the book ends well, the chapter Creative Agnosticism is strong.

I have the New Falcon edition... and I have just bought the Hilaritas edition. I will reread it and see if I think differently on a second reading.

Rarebit Fiend: @Inigo- I love Coincidance- The Finnegans Wake material is worth the entire book. I do agree that "email to the universe" is a bit of a patch up job and would have rather RAW have completed "Tale of the Tribe."

I am incredibly prejudiced to favor Alan Moore and enjoyed the introduction. However Moore definitely has his own intellectual biases and agendas- however RAW's interpretations of information could be heavily influenced by his own expectations. For all our agnosticism we all still have definite biases.

My comments: 

1. It seems to me that in any discussion of Robert Anton Wilson's "worst book," the obvious front runner would be The Sex Magicians, which was published as a pornographic book. I have never seen it listed anywhere in Wilson's own official list of his works, and Hilaritas Press has not announced plans to republish it, so it seems to me it's never been considered part of the canon, even though it was published under Wilson's name.

2. I'm still reading The New Inquisition, but I thought the first chapter of the book was indeed very good, as Inigo Montoya says. It's as good as any nonfiction RAW ever wrote. I did not like one sentence referencing Carl Sagan and there seems to be a consensus portions of the book may be a bit weaker.

But I have to respectfully beg to differ with Inigo on Coincidance and Email to the Universe, which I thought were both very strong collections (and Hilaritas has beefed up the latter by adding a long interview with RAW, otherwise unavailable.)  Both of these books have some of my favorite RAW essays and the overall quality to me seemed strong.  It is true they don't really have a unified theme, although there is a lot of unified Joyce material in Coincidance. 

The only RAW book which has disappointed me so far is TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution. Certainly entertaining and worth a read, but not really as strong as any other book I've read so far. I'm pretty sure Eric disagrees with me on this, but I would have expected RAW writing about the war on drugs to write a better book.

3. Iain Spence raises another point, and it's something Hilaritas Press deserves a lot of credit for, so I want to amplify it. Robert Anton Wilson fans in Great Britain have found it's very difficult and expensive to obtain many titles in Robert Anton Wilson's back catalog. Hilaritas of course is publishing definitive editions for everyone, but they are also making it possible for our British friends, who have done so much to keep Wilson's legacy alive,  to obtain these titles easily and at a reasonable price, and to aid Wilson's family, to boot.

Fandom and RAW

Eric Wagner's Introduction for Nature's God has a footnote that touches on science fiction fandom. He writes, "Some science fiction fans in the 1940's worshiped a deity named Ghu, who caused typos in fanzines. In his honor they inserted h's in various words: bheer, ghod, etc.")

I have been reading classics of fannish writing available at the TransAtlantic Fan Fund
Free Ebooks website -- Ah! Sweet Idiocy! by Francis T. Laney last year (maybe not so much a classic as a historical curiosity) and just recently, Fandom Harvest by Terry Carr (also a writer and famous SF editor.) I've been wondering lately whether fannish writing will ever get recognition, outside of fandom itself, and will be remembered. It was sometimes a source of often quite good writing, although for a limited audience. It's a literary movement, separate from science fiction itself, that hasn't gotten much attention from the mainstream. The internet seems to offer  hope that some fanzines will be preserved and maybe even read.

I don't know if Eric intended a larger point or just wanted to offer an interesting and amusing aside, but the creation of the mock god Ghu in the 1940's seems to prefigure Discordianism and other later created religions.

There's always been considerable overlap between SF fandom and RAW fandom; one example familiar to readers of this blog is BNF (big name fan) Arthur Hlavaty, multiple "Best Fan Writer" Hugo nominee and also a prominent RAW fan mentioned once or twice in RAW's books. While of course he blogs, he also still issues actual fanzines, and happy fanniversary to him. (See also this Hlavaty fanzine archive, and this one. Lots of good reading!) Some of us also have been involved in fandom; I am not a BNF but I formerly belonged to APA-50 and (for a shorter time) to FAPA, have contributed occasional articles and LOCs (letters of comment) to fanzines and attended conventions. I have an "attending" membership in the New Zealand worldcon this year, which has gone virtual. I don't know how active Eric has been, but if he knows esoterica such as "Ghu" he's an insider.

Perhaps my favorite of the old fannish writers was Redd Boggs. I used to republish  his fanzines in APA-50, so that some of my fannish friends would know about him. I can't find any of his zines online.

On vacation

I am on vacation this week at Sandbridge Beach, Virginia, near Virginia Beach, not far from the battle of Yorktown mentioned in Nature's God. In one of those synchronicities that science fiction fans sometimes run into, we are staying on condo no. 334 (which is also the name of a Thomas M. Disch novel). When I met my wife, she told me she got her undergraduate degree at Clarion University, and I puzzled her by exclaiming, "Oh, Clarion is famous!"

On our way, we stopped to visit the Flight 93 memorial. The biographies of the passengers and crew are almost a miniature novel.

Speaking of being a science fiction fan, getting caught up on my reading is always a part of going on vacation for me, and I've been reading Jo Walton's history of the Hugo Award. It's not a perfect book, but it's a lot of fun for people who have read lots of science fiction. Arthur Hlavaty's numerous nominations for Best Fan Writer are mentioned, and Walton writes, "People could still nominate Arthur Hlavaty now. He's still a terrific fan writer. He has a wonderful way of putting things."

Arthur Hlavaty, fiction critic

[Arthur Hlavaty (aka Supergee) is, among other useful qualities, a rather good book critic.

He recently dug through his voluminous back pages to produce a new ezine, Archive I: Down by the Old Slipstream, which reprints past writings about many interesting authors. Arthur should consider putting enough of these writings (or any of his other writings) together to put out a book. Maybe an ebook, maybe also a paper book. Any such volume presumably would include Arthur's writings on Robert Anton Wilson.

It's the best zine I've read in awhile (I can't give you the best example without providing an unforgivable spoiler -- just read it), and you can get your copy here, in a nicely-formatted PDF. 

Here is Arthur's short piece on Barrington J. Bailey, a writer I apparently ought to get to know.

--The Management]

Barrington J. Bayley

By Arthur Hlavaty

Philip K. Dick is dead. No, he’s outside, looking in. A friend called up the other night to announce that he’d heard that Dick had checked out of consensus reality with a stroke.
    I mourn him as the inventor of what is now my favorite kind of sf­the philosophical kind. The emphasis on him as a drug writer has always been a misleading form of sensationalism. I suspect that none of the many people who describe The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (perhaps his masterpiece) as “the ultimate acid book” have ever tried acid. Dick’s subjects are more like metaphysics and ontology. There is little agreement as to which of his books are the best--indeed, I do not always agree with myself on this matter--but Time out of Joint, Ubik, Eye in the Sky, and A Maze of Death remain in my mind.
    Dick leaves a couple of heirs to his tradition. One is my old pal Rudy Rucker, whose Software I recommended last installment. The other is a man who gets a whole lot less recognition than I for one think he deserves: Barrington J. Bayley.
    Bayley is an unusual writer in a variety of ways. One can see him as a strange sort of amphibian, in that he has been most published by New Worlds and by DAW. He is not a writer one seeks out for literary merit, characterization, elegant prose, adventure, or sex. If anything, he can be compared with writers such as Clement, Niven, and Hogan,* who seek to do only one thing in their sf. But while the others speculate scientifically, Bayley deals with philosophical and spiritual questions, matters of the essence of reality.
    Bayley has been largely concerned with the nature of Time in his writings, and perhaps his two best books until now, Collision Course and The Fall of Chronopolis, presented new approaches to this problem. More recently, he has incorporated such occult studies as Gnosticism, alchemy, and the Tarot in his work. A recent collection, The Knights of the Limits, offered a variety of remarkable inventions.
    His latest, The Pillars of Eternity (DAW pb), may be his best. He pulls together a number of themes from his past writing, adds some new and startling possibilities, and ties them all together into a satisfying resolution. If you like philosophical sf, don’t miss this one. [1982]

*In 1982 James Hogan was considered a hard-science writer, rather than a crank.

Supergee on 'The Earth Will Shake'

[Continuing the gala celebration over the publication of the Hilaritas Press editions of The Historical Illuminatus books, here's Arthur Hlavaty's review of The Earth Will Shake from "New Libertarian" Volume 4, Number 13 from April 1985. Thank you to Martin Wagner for sharing it with me. and to Mr. Hlavaty for giving me the go-ahead to share this with you. -- The Mgt.]

New Illuminatus! book!

The Earth Will Shake by Robert Anton Wilson 

Reviewed by Arthur D. Hlavaty

It has been said that the writings of Robert Anton Wilson encourage paranoia. That's at best an oversimplification, but those who believe it are not entirely mistaken, for two reasons:

1 Wilson's writings encourage new ways of looking at the world, seeing patterns which are not obvious to others, and while this sort of thinking can lead to scientific breakthroughs and brilliant new literary approaches, it is also found in paranoids. 

2 The publication history of Wilson's writings, from the five-year delay of Illuminatus! to the present, is enough to raise the possibility of Sinister Forces trying to keep the words from the eyes of the public. (On the other hand, those writings also remind us that we should be wary of blaming on conspiracy that which can more simply and convincingly be attributed to incompetence.)

The work at hand continues that lamentable tradition. The Earth Will Shake was published in hardcover, late in 1982, by J.P. Tarcher. At least, they said they published it. I suspect they released it on a need-to-know basis. Living in a university town, with several good bookstores besides the college bookstore, I never saw a copy for sale and had to go up to New York to purchase it. People all over the country reported similar difficulties. But now, a few months after the announced publication date (of course), there is a paperback edition available. I've seen it.

Is it worth the wait? You bet. Like all of Wilson's prior fiction, alone and in collaboration, it offers the interest of complex ideas, entertainingly worked out. More than that, it represents a major improvement in literary merit. It opens with a stunning scene of a murder at High Mass, in which the images of Transubstantiation and Mystical Presence mix with the physical fact of sudden and violent death. The characters, though similar to those in earlier Wilson books, are more fully developed and rounded than ever before. The scene -- 18th-century Italy, with its complex mazes of theological and Enlightenment speculation, revolutionary movements and conspiracies -- is richly delineated.

My one caveat would be that the book is, as indicated on the cover, the first of a series, and thus is somewhat incomplete and openended. Other than that, I recommend the book unreservedly. -- ADH

 

A new Ezra Pound book

Mug shot of Ezra Pound, when he went into captivity in 1945. 

Supergee reviews a new book about Ezra Pound, The Bughouse by Daniel Swift. 

"Some critics I respect (Hugh Kenner, Robert Anton Wilson) love him; others (Christopher Hitchens, Clive James) do not; and the latest book about him—The Bughouse, by David Swift—suggests an explanation. Swift says that bad poetry is hard to write about, and there is much of that in Pound, but the good parts are good enough to keep the critics busy," Supergee observes. "As the title suggests, The Bughouse deals with Pound’s years in St. Elizabeths Hospital (which is now headquarters for Homeland Security; you can’t make these things up) after World War II."

The conclusion? "If you are interested in Pound, this is a part of the story well worth reading."

More here.

Supergee's latest zine

Arthur Hlavaty, right (with Kevin Maroney and Bernadette Bosky. 

Arthur Hlavaty has issued his latest zine, Nice Distinctions 29, available here with a bunch of back issues. The publication is listed as "Discordian Regimentation #129."

Arthur has not lost his ability for wonderful one-liners. Here he is, leading off a rant about the Apple company:

Let me tell you how much I hate Apple: If there were a way for Apple to play against the New England Patriots, I would root for the Patriots.

From the obituaries section of the zine:

Now They want you to believe Mark Lane is dead.

Arthur posts here (in the comments) and at his popular blog as Supergee,  but I wonder sometimes if readers of this blog also know he is a big name science fiction fan, nominated 12 times in a row for the best fan writer Hugo (from 1980 to 1992). 

A 'lost' Discordian novel by John F. Carr and Camden Benares

Adam Gorightly has been publishing lots of interesting material at his Historia Discordia website, but I was particularly interested in his new piece on the novel A Certain Flair for Death, unpublished for years after it was completed by John F. Carr and Camden Benares (author of Zen Without Zen Masters, etc.)

Although it went unpublished for years, Robert Anton Wilson apparently read it in manuscript. Here is RAW's quote: “The best psychological science-fiction novel since The Demolished Man…the tension mounts and mounts…I couldn’t put it down…it might do your head as much good as an Encounter Group with the Marx Brothers!” The book actually came out last summer after years in limbo,  but this is the first time I ran across any mention of it. The book has no reviews so far on Amazon, so maybe Gorightly (and my blog) can give it some much-needed publicity.

I have not read anything by John F. Carr despite my longtime SF reading habit; the Gorightly piece features an article by Carr which reminisces about Benares and the difficult history of the Crying Clown series (which includes A Certain Flair for Death; Carr plans to bring out two more completed novels.) I hope that at some point, Carr decides to pay attention to details. The formatting for Kindle for A Certain Flair for Death is not well done, as I discovered after buying a copy.

The SF Encylopedia entry on John F. Carr is here; interestingly, the only Carr book John Clute likes is Carnifex Mardi Gras, a prequel to A Certain Flair for Death. For more on Camden Benares, see Supergee's post. For more on the RAW connection to Benares, see my post. 

Rainbow Run is a Carr-Benares novel that came out last year.