Rewired_ The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly [178]
A nova erupted at the center of the space where math and Detectives live. A wave of scouring numbers washed outward, spreading all across Nashville, all across the Voluntary State to fill all the space within the containment field.
The 144 Detectives evaporated. The King of the Rock Monkeys, nothing but twisted light, fell into shadow. The Commodores fell immobile, the ruined biology seated in their chests went blind, then deaf, then died.
And singing Nashville fell quiet. Ten thousand thousand heads slammed shut and ten thousand thousand souls fell insensate, unsupported, in need of revival.
North of the Girding Wall, alarms began to sound.
At the Parthenon, Japheth Sapp gently placed the tips of his index and ring fingers on Jenny’s eyelids and pulled them closed.
Then the ragged Crow pushed past Soma and hurried out into the night. The Great Salt Lick glowed no more, and even the lights of the city were dimmed, so Soma quickly lost sight of the man. But then the cawing voice rang out once more. “We only hurt the car because we had to.”
Soma thought for a moment, then said, “So did I.”
But the Crow was gone, and then Soma had nothing to do but wait. He had made the only decision he had left in him. He idly watched as burning bears floated down into the sea. A striking image, but he had somewhere misplaced his paints.
Kessel to Sterling, 2 December 1988:
“I don’t think, in the end, this is a matter of rational ‘ideas.’ You are nearer the quick of it with words like ‘wonder,’ ‘transcendence,’ ‘visionary drive,’ ‘conceptual novelty’ — and especially ‘cosmic fear.’ This is the dirty little secret of science fiction: that its roots are planted not in the logical, positivistic assumptions of ‘science,’ but in some twisted apprehension (I use the word in the sense both of understanding and fear) that ‘the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.’ We fear and are attracted by that irrationality. It yawns like a pit beneath our attempts to understand technology’s effects on us; it tugs at us like a cliff whispering, ‘come on, jump.’ In the interview Kelly and I did with you in Austin a year ago, you talked about wanting to seize the crowbar and smash something. What is that thing you want to smash? Could it be the mundane world’s assumption (born, more and more in our time, out of desperate need instead of smug complacency) that the universe makes sense, that things are stable, that change can be understood and controlled? I have this gut feeling that almost all children destined to grow up to become science fiction writers have some fundamental experience of chaos somewhere in their formative years…. Some writers react by seeking a rigid authoritarianism…others may reach for certainty but remain convinced throughout their lives that Things Change and Are Not What They Seem…
But what are those skills [of a first-rate writer]? I think in the end, they are not skills at all, but a matter of temperament or character, or not even that — it’s a state of mind that you can attain for moments but which isn’t finally you…. What I mean is what I said in a letter to you a long time ago, that great writers go out on a limb farther than good writers do. They aren’t afraid to violate rules, good taste, logic, sensible advice, proportion, etc. in the pursuit of whatever demon they’re trying to catch, whatever quicksilver they’re trying to nail to the tree.”
Two Dreams on Trains
Elizabeth Bear
In Gibson, the corporations and power structures control everything (and ultimately, shadowy Wintermute rules all). The only hope for freedom is to live completely outside of “Babylon” like his space rastas, or to drop out into the underworld like Case and Molly, the beautiful losers of the urban night world, or to steal enough money in the hope of placing your self beyond control.
Most people in the world cannot opt out. What if