Interview Update: December 1996
Q: Let's start with the books. You've got Silicon Embrace, a new novel out (the first since
Wetbones,) City Comes A-Walkin has been reprinted and the collection The Exploded Heart was released with it. That's three books in about three months. Only R.L. Stine can beat that. Let's
take them one by one, chronologically: City is a cult classic and undoubtedly the first cyberpunk novel. How does it read to you now? How does it feel to have it back out there after 17 years? ©1997 Paula Guran
Original Interview: January 1996
Interview Update: January 1998
Interview Update: January 1999
A: It reads like a product of the inspiration of youth, which is both powerful and deranged; it casts
its net wide, but not always deeply enough. It reads like it should have been restructured in some
ways, and, of course, some of it reads as a little obsolete -- but then the book was more about our
metaphysical relationship to culture and to technology than about "high tech," so it doesn't matter if
it's outdated in some high tech respects. Since the book predicts ATMs and the like, it was
somewhat prescient, and it is marvelously self-vindicating read in the here and now. The book's
metaphysical ideas were both a bit naive and surprisingly sophisticated. It is as if, as I remember,
they were dictated to me. The writing was done at breakneck pace, as fast as I could type (but it
was NOT written on drugs), and in some ways the book shows it. In other ways it is surprisingly
mellifluous.
Q: Exploded Heart is presented with a lot of pretty personal material about your life. Why was
that important to do? What about the stories? Some were written very early. How do they stand up
against later work?
A: The personal material may seem rather too personal, but it's not as raw as the stuff I cut, and the
stuff I never dared to put down. The idea with it was...well, the book was supposed to be subtitled
Trajectory of a Science Fiction Punk. You were supposed to see this sort of arc of creativity
and confrontation and misery and bizarre glory, through recent history; that is. It was supposed to
sort of parallel the development of punk and alternative art and music, as I had experiences and
matured. It was necessary, I thought, to show the scary ferment (some of it) I was gestating my
work in, in order to show how the "trajectory", the arc, took shape.
It was supposed to come
across as a kind of novel within a novel, though the novel within was real life. Then again, writing it was part of a personal self examination.
The stories show the same (as with City) tension between youthful inspiration, and my lack of
sophistication; but in many ways I was more sophisticated than more educated people. In other
ways I was weirdly "under-socialized," out of touch with the flow of social life and standard
education. I knew everything about the writing of Andre Breton and Celine and nothing about, say,
Jane Austen. I was absolutely unafraid, in my choice of subject matter. It shows my genre-damage
-- but also the intensity I tried to cultivate in my work, the Rimbaudian, the Iggylike questing for
being MORE ALIVE. It shows the conscious attempt to make the strangest ideas I could find
accessible to the ordinary mind of the ordinary reader. I tried, anyway.
Q: Silicon Embrace is the new novel. Why did it take you so long to do another after
Wetbones?
A: Because the science fiction field does not reward most of its artists. It allows writers like Alfred
Bester and Avram Davidson, for example, to literally die on the vine of poverty and alcoholism. I
wasn't going to let that happen to me. I am responsible to various ex-wives and the children I had
with two ex-wives. I needed to make money so I wrote scripts instead of a novel.
Q: With Embrace, you seem to take on a new challenge. The book is entertaining but also seems
to convey a lot of social psychology, spirituality and questioning. For all it's philosophizing and
post-apocalyptic setting it's also the most optimistic book you've ever written. Were you attempting
to break new ground and in what ways?
A: There's a sense in which questioning, if it's done with a consciousness of one's whole being, is
itself spirituality. I see the future as a darkness out of which will come a light. I was also asking
myself: post-cyberpunk, what? I could only answer for myself: the "what" was an expansion in real
consciousness; not just techno-consciousness. As for the social future: I foresee fragmentation that
will lead to unity, the question is will it be a relatively enlightened unity, or a fascist unity? I am
convinced that either there will be a world government, or there will be disaster. But will it be a
world government that only governs where it should govern (i.e., with respect to human rights, the
global environment, and economic health,) or will it be a ghastly "new world order".
Q: Do you think people will "get it"?
A: Silicon Embrace? If they're entertained by it, it doesn't matter if they 'get it'. There are things in
it that I hope some people will 'get', I admit. Some seeds fall on fertile ground, most on barren
ground; or they are consumed by insects. Others are made into someone's bread; a different kind
of nourishment perhaps than intended, but so what?
Q: Tell me something about your personal belief structure. A reader can see a certain philosophy
growing throughout your writing. Even more importantly, you seem to derive your daily balance
from it.
A: I don't think I should say much about it. In Silicon Embrace I have been trying to do with my
philosophy, if that's what it is, what Vonnegut did with his in Slaughterhouse-Five. That is -- not
sell it, but portray it. I'm sure I didn't succeed as well as Vonnegut.
It isn't my teaching, it's the Perennial Philosophy, as in Aldous Huxley's book (though it isn't
Huxley's teaching either). I will say that there are levels of consciousness, and you don't need drugs
to explore them; that one must be skeptical of people who offer seeming access to higher
consciousness, since most of them are charlatans. Nevertheless, with this discrimination in mind,
one must not cease looking, if one wishes to be more than a bundle of reactions and animal
impulses. I think it's time to find a balance between our usual pursuits, and the pursuit of something
real, and lasting; between life (as people suppose it to be) and philosophy. And what, really, is
philosophy? It's a conscious seeking.
All I will say further is that while morality is relative, without a doubt, there is also guidance
available, to those who are not entirely asleep. But then, few people know they are asleep.
Q: Music has always been an important part of your life. You have a CD coming out soon?
Yes. Can't seem to help myself. It's called The Panther Moderns, which is also the name of the
band, and will be available through the website eventually. I am the vocalist and lyricist; it's not my
first band. My guitar player and primary composer, John Karr, is fucking brilliant; he is a guitarist
comparable to Frank Zappa.
Q: If all this wasn't enough, you've recently escaped from L.A. and now live in the Bay Area. Does this mean you are giving up screen work?>
A: Can't afford to give it up. I'm writing Mysterium, based on the Robert Charles Wilson novel
(he's quite a good writer,) for the Fox channel.
Q: What new projects, new directions are in the works for you?
A: Mysterium, of course; the screenplay for The Brigade (based on my suspense novel) is now
being marketed; my adaptation of Stinger; a script called Shadow Kids that the producers of
Mysterium have taken on; the three part movie I wrote, Primal Scream, will eventually be on
Showtime -- they just filmed it in Canada.
I have a novel in my head called Angry Angel, but I'm not going to write it unless I hear from a
major publisher that they're quite interested. Very, very interested.
