Yesterday I was resting on my chaise-lounge eating hot buttered teacakes and reading the collected works of Saki whilst listening to Edith Piaf on the gramophone. Today, I am in the hot broiling city, in scratchy tweeds looking down at the pale and pimply faces of my staff and their proffered words and pictures as they shuffle across the office floor on their bony knees.
Thank goodness then for the jottings of Mark Lewis, new enfant terrible of the Gindylow literature factory, he of such past glories as ‘The Skin Suitcase’. Alright, so his work has a certain lower-sixth naivety and would seem rather more Sci-Fi Then than Sci-Fi Now, and certainly reads as if there’s never been a Bladerunner or a Neuromancer or indeed New Romance, and seems rather more John Wyndham’s maiden aunt’s hobby-horse than real cutting edge stuff. And though it was laughed out of the offices of both Interzone and Asimov’s Science Fiction, I still feel that, well, it’s better than the rest of the random and ridiculous jottings my staff are currently vomiting out. Also, though embarrassingly short on scientific fact, cogent plotting and believable characters, it does at least have a reasonable amount of long words spelled correctly and some nice, accompanying pictures; and though the idea of time-travel is incredibly hackneyed and overused in Sci-Fi, it does at least contain a couple of laughs in reference to toilets, and a bit of almost quite persuasive social comment, which is what it’s all about really; or so I tried to console Mr Lewis as I helped him off the filing cabinet and unwound the kettle-flex he was trying to hang himself with.
So, sit back in your well-upholstered mahogany and brass time-chair, put your slippered feet up on the Axminster-topped chrono-footplate and with a cup of Darjeeling at your elbow, enjoy our latest fictive offering: Dive into Yesterday’, it’s really not all that bad.
by Mark Lewis Part 1 - Big Brains of Sci-Fi
According to all the advance publicity, the 16th conference of the Big Brains of Sci-Fi was to be held in the
When the small cluster of jet-lagged fans arrived from the airport, still shaking the dust of
In reality the two hundred and twelve conference delegates were relaying their speeches via the numbskull network or alternatively the braindrayne (depending on a viewer’s financial situation) so that a million-or-so less keen, but infinitely wiser Sci-Fi fans, were able to enjoy the conference in the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the large and unwieldy relay squatting on the stage of the Victoria Hotel, Nairobi.
The delegates also enjoyed themselves. In fact, not having to be physically present at the conference, some of the delegates enjoyed themselves so much that they were often to be seen delivering their keynote speeches in the comfort of their own kitchen; or in the comfort of an expensive restaurant with a few intimate friends. Veteran author Dag Maggertone, was even spotted delivering his speech from the comfort of his own toilet, but the less said about that the better.
So that was the 16th conference of the Big Brains of Sci-Fi.
Everything was going swimmingly. The service engineer was able to finish his newspaper in perfect contentment and then move onto an edition of the Jet-Boot Gazette. The twenty or so mistaken but still die-hard fans enjoyed taking bets on who was speaking now and what a particular series of blinking lights on the relay meant; whilst the other million or so less keen, but infinitely wiser Sci-Fi fans enjoyed the facial contortions of Dag Maggertone as he tried to alleviate some of the colonic irritations he had suffered since lunchtime.
Everything in fact was going swimmingly until Leonard Skrane burst into the conference unannounced.
If you had been one of the less keen, but infinitely wiser Sci-Fi fans sitting in your own living room, this is what you would have seen: viewing the conference by numbskull (or the cheaper and let it be said, far inferior brayndrayne), your own front room would have been transformed into a virtual conference hall. In front of you, where perhaps your treehee or your quadro usually sat would be the darkened stage, and seated (squatting or standing according to what they were up to at the time of transmission) would be the delegates attending that particular session.
So for instance if you had been watching the debate on ‘Who Is the Biggest Brain in Sci-Fi’ , you would have seen Gray Howser on the left, dressed in sarong and open-toed sandals, lying in his hammock and sipping on a cocktail; Dag Maggertone on Howser’s left, still unfortunately straining on his gold-plated toilet bowl; Saybe Goff, on Maggertone’s left, wearing dressing-gown and slippers and sitting in a comfy armchair; and finally May Yang O, seated in a restaurant enjoying a fine steak and claret, dressed to the nines and laughing at a joke her (unseen) companion has just told. Then suddenly, as Howser drawlingly lets rip about the genius of Sladek, Skrane fizzes onto the scene.
Skrane is dressed strangely for a young man of the twenty-second century: bowler-hat, black frock-coat, waistcoat, cravat, a pair of black, narrow trousers and shiny, narrow-toed
“Poppycock!” He bellows at the top of his virtual voice. “Bilgewater and tripe!”
Howser meanwhile has spilled tequila sunrise all over his sarong and is mopping at it furiously as Skrane marches towards him. So, with Howser otherwise engaged, it is left to Saybe Goff to leap to her feet in indignant fury.
“What gives you the right to rudely barge-in without an invitation? And besides whatever your opinions of our esteemed colleague’s opinion, this is neither the time nor place to voice them. I myself would love to thunder ‘Nonsense, Bradbury was a far superior writer, why just look at his sensual imagery coupled with …”
But Skrane has no time for this. He waves his hands emphatically as if scrubbing Goff’s sentences away.
“You’re missing the point all of you!” He shouts passionately. “I came here today not to argue but to tell you without contradiction who the Biggest Brain in Sci-Fi is, was and will be and the great tragedy is, once you might have all agreed with me!”
There was a brooding silence as the other delegates looked at each other; perhaps searching for an explanation or an indication of what to do. But despite the combined power of their big Sci-Fi brains, their faces remained blank.
“Yes fellow science-fiction writers,” Skrane continued, “from your vacuous expressions I can see it has already come to pass that the man whom once you would have celebrated as the Shakespeare of Sci-Fi has been expunged from your memories as easily as a tear wiped from the eye; and as I am most ashamed to admit, it is I brothers and sisters who am to blame!”
The faces of the delegates remained blank, all except that of May Pang O, who had broken off her meal to make a phone-call. She turned her own, broadcast volume off and began a silent but clearly furious tirade into the ‘phone. She had called the broadcasting network in an attempt to have Skrane’s signal blocked.
It was no good.
Unlike the other big Brains of Sci-Fi, Skrane was also a scientific virtuoso and thanks to his technical know-how, he had set up a number of hidden numbskull relays so that it was impossible to trace his original signal. The only way to remove him from the conference, the numbskul network’s technical manager confided solemnly, was to pull the plug on the whole conference and begin again. May Pang snapped her phone shut angrily and then fizzed out of the conference altogether. Evidently the steak, the burgundy and the witty conversation had more to offer than Leonard Skrane’s nonsensical invasion.
Skrane meanwhile was beginning to strut and fret across the stage in a distinctly Shakespearian manner; one thin white hand thumping his breast whilst the other fanned the air with his bowler.
“Yes my literary brethren, I am the guilty party and must answer for crimes not only to the good and noble name of Science-Fiction Literature, but to the very progress and development of human society itself!”
The blank looks of the delegates turned to looks of alarm. Either Skrane was telling the truth or (and this was the more likely suggestion of the two) he was insane. But, insane or not, he continued to hold court:
“And now I feel I owe you a proper explanation and so I will deliver an explanation such as you have never heard before …
“As you know I have long been at the forefront of my field, indeed perhaps the greatest living exponent of the science-fiction genre (coughs and splutters of outrage from the other delegates). To what I attribute this genius I cannot truly say except a natural brilliance combined with a beneficial regime of hard work and efficiency. Also, as you know, I have kept myself abreast of all the new scientific developments, so that in my own small way I have produced much that is innovative and new in the field of quantum physics; my own particular field of expertise.
“What has always disappointed me however is the inability to really help my fellow Man, except perhaps by giving him a few hours of relief with my many wonderful stories. So it was with this unfulfilled desire to help humanity in mind that I set out to contribute something to what I perceived as the untold suffering of Mankind. But where to begin?
“It seemed to me that the worst thing about our modern age is the grim, dehumanising effect that technology has on ordinary people. People live in isolation. They have laboursaving devices, but because labour is saved it is also devalued. Esteem and personal worth is measured in terms of economic wealth, and yet, ironically the only people who possess that wealth are the most unworthy; people possessed of freakish skills or a selfish tenacity that has propelled them into a near god-like stratosphere of obscene wealth and appreciation.
Wars are still fought but the casualties are no longer the soldiers but rather the poor civilians who starve or die of thirst whilst their governments and the ones they are fighting spend all their resources on bigger and more devastating weapons. The only way to escape these horrors is through a mixture of narcotic abuse, sexual adventure, home-decorating and technological opiates.
“In short ladies and gentlemen, technology is the hand-maiden of our modern horror. But how so? Surely, our forefathers dreamed of technology as an aid to mankind? Surely they thought that technology would free humanity from the unlovely drudgery of existence, which would in turn enable humanity at last to create the kind of enlightened utopia that mankind had always dreamed of? If so, what had distorted our aspirations and dreams? And it was whilst pondering this last question that the answer came to me; why my friends the answer was: ‘stories’; stories had distorted the dreams of technological utopia, and in particular the stories of one man: none other than Albert Gore, the biggest brain in Science-Fiction ever; bar none!”
Once again the conference guests and delegates regarded each other with blank looks; except this time there was a faint glimmer or frown of concentration in several of the faces; as if, even though they had no memory of the name Albert Gore, once, lurking amongst their neural connections there had been an Albert Gore-sized memory. And now, as they struggled to remember his name, they were probing the gap that had been left, like a tongue feeling the hole where a tooth had once been.
Skrane carefully scrutinised his audience for a glimmer of memory, and then sighed. The blank looks had won.
“I suppose then it behoves me to explain in more detail,” said Skrane sadly.
“Albert Gore was born on
“Nevertheless, Albert had not forgotten his aspirations and so during the few hours of respite he earned; on Sunday afternoons, on high days and holidays - he began to write stories full of warnings and fears for what might happen if humanity gave itself over to its darkest side; and strangely enough, just as a draper’s assistant from Bromley in Kent began to write about a possible Martian invasion of Earth, Gore was writing with almost godly prescience about all the things that would eventually take place in his future and our present. It was those stories that made him famous throughout the world and earned him the title of the biggest brain in Sci-Fi.
“But what of his prognostications? Even though he had warned us about a world overrun with machines, where human lives were as cheap as dirt; why did we not take heed? Because to be frank ladies and gentlemen, they were so damn exciting and interesting in precisely the way that something pious and noble isn’t. But there was something more chilling still about his predictions; something about his stories which seemed to inspire or even compel mankind to emulate them. Yes, I had no doubt that albeit unintentionally the wonderful, compelling but ultimately bleak stories of Albert Gore had influenced and therefore indirectly created the modern world we are living in today. And so friends with this in mind, I set out to do something about it. I set out to travel back in time to stop Albert Gore destroying the glorious progress of mankind towards Utopia …”
After clearing his throat theatrically, Skrane began to tell his story in the narrative style that had yet to earn him a place amongst the Big Brains of Sci-Fi.
End of Part 1.
