Review: From Norman Spinrad and Edgar Pangborn, Two Classic Science Fiction Novels

Ah, science fiction. Glimpses of futures that most likely will never come to be.

Or will they?

I read a lot. Slowed down a bit as the years rolled by, but still a lot when compared with the average.

What’s amazing is that the number didn’t increase during the pandemic!

OK, guess I really read a lot, when compared with the average American! I know I read significantly more than fifty books in a year (and I finish those). How about you? I’ll wait…

My favorite genre is science fiction. There’s a lot of it out there, more every day. Trends come and go, but I suppose I have the most respect for and interest in the established masters and their seminal works, giants in the field. Even with that restriction, I still feel that there are more books I’m interested in than I will ever have the chance to read. Two authors of note that I hadn’t gotten to were Norman Spinrad and Edgar Pangborn. Let me just say that I’m very glad to have finally sampled their work, and I hope you will be too.

As a nod to Fallout’s current popularity, let’s start with Davy, Pangborn’s best-known work. Published in 1964, the story is set in New York, New England and environs some 300 years after nuclear war. First, I’d just like to point out that the protagonists aren’t part of some pseudo- Native American culture, as happens in just so many post-apocalypse books. No, this society is evocative of revolutionary-era New England. And that’s just so refreshing. For instance, those two Andre Norton books I reviewed recently definitely had the wandering nomad vibe. SM Stirling’s Ember series had that vibe in places too (I only read the first two novels in the fifteen-novel series before putting them aside).

Anyway, let’s stick with Davy. The feel reminds me of Ray Bradbury crossed with Manly Wade Wellman and Salem, Massachusetts. What the heck am I talking about? The characters have their own patois. It’s charming and often funny. Their frame of reference is small-town countryside, mixed liberally with a lot of misquoted warped historical references (also often funny). Their nations are dominated by an oppressive church that does more than just dabble in politics. Using words of more than one syllable are likely to get you stoned by the outrage mob. Easy to get executed for imagined heresies.

And a Davy cover from Boris Vallejo! That’s a jarring contrast!

But just to mix things up, the radiation means there are plenty of mutant births to contend with. And thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live. In fact, all pregnancies must be registered and from the fifth month no pregnant mother is left alone. Ya know, just in case there’s a mutant on the way. And oh yeah, the priest will be there with his knife to end the lives of any of those little newborns. Of course, there are no priests to stop the wilderness mutants, both men and animals, from breeding.

So of course humanity has war and greed and superstition and all the rest, and the church condemns the past so ignorance is rampant. Do we have a chance to build a better society than what came before? Well, Pangborn wrote more stories outside of this one in the same setting, so you can always find out for yourself.

Overall, this book is like a summer day in the country, listening to an accomplished old spinner of tales and drinking a rich golden brew. It’s really enjoyable as well as thought-provoking. The characters are a lot of fun, and our Davy does “the ramble” so we can see all that there is to see. He is the Candide of the post-apocalypse. Journey along with him, you won’t regret it.

Next up is a dystopian precursor to cyberpunk, Norman Spinrad’s 1969 Bug Jack Barron. Originally published over several issues in New Worlds (the magazine edited by Michael Moorcock), the controversy surrounding this work would do any cyberpunk proud. I’d certainly seen Spinrad’s name around (he wrote the script for the original Star Trek’s The Doomsday Machine after all), but this title made me think that Bug Jack Barron was about some shady tough-guy two-fisted robber-baron of space, something like Alfred Bester’s Gully Foyle. Couldn’t have been more wrong.

No, the title of the novel is the title of Jack Barron’s TV show, “Bug Jack Barron.” If something’s bugging you, you call in to the live show and crusader Jack will confront the big-shots who are responsible for heinous deeds. 100 million Americans are on the line, and they worship Jack. Sound familiar? Well bunkie, not in 1969 it wasn’t! Prescient, is what it is.

I said dystopia, and I meant it. Written in 1967, the references are to George Wallace, Bob Dylan and Berkeley, dig? Except Jack and his buddies are veterans of the New Bolshevik movement, and Jack was the founder of the Social Justice Coalition (slap yourself, he wrote this in 1967!). Oh, except that he “sold out” and got his own television show, abandoning his crusader pals for a plush life in a penthouse.

Dig that 1972 illustration, baby.

And that didn’t go over well with his wife, Sara. Nope, she was still that little SJW from Berkeley, and after some screaming fights she walked out. That was six years ago.

But lets talk about the dystopia. There’s a guaranteed income. It keeps people poor. The one percent is firmly in charge. African-Americans have somehow been ceded Mississippi, and now it’s a huge state-sized ghetto. California is the last bastion of the Republican party (as in the Reagan era). The Democrats are in bed with every crook out there. The theme is pretty much that when you hit thirty years of age you “grow up,” abandon your indignation and start looking out for yourself.

Well, if that’s an option. And apparently it’s not an option for most people.

But let’s talk about the writing, shall we? Remember how I mentioned John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar recently? And how I mentioned Marshall McLuhan? Because Brunner was pushing the envelope with his writing style and I wasn’t enjoying it at all? IMO, Brunner should’ve huddled with Spinrad and got some pointers. I know, heresy, but in my defense I present Bug Jack Barron. Inspired by the Beats, Spinrad’s word-craftsmanship is art. Here, let me quote something from Bug Jack Barron for you.

Jack got Bug Jack Barron (losing Sara, poor-couldn’t-cut-it good-heart good fuck Peter Pan living relic of what we all lost making it all a silly-ass-lie Sara), and you got this gig in Evers, Mississippi, you white nigger you. Schmuck you are to think anyone could bring it all back, bring back youth truth don’t give a shit close to the bloody happy balling days when we knew we could do it all if only we had the power. Now we got the power, I got the power, Jack got the power, and to get it he paid our balls, is all.

You dig that? Now for comparison dig Allen Ginsberg, Beat poet. Here’s the beginning of Howl, from 1955.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war…

Yeah. Norman Spinrad, wordsmith, inspired by Ginsberg. When this story hit the streets there was more than a little push-back. (Same with Howl back in ’55. You can see that Spinrad took it further.) Who championed Spinrad? Michael Moorcock, New Wave icon. Who lauded him? Harlan Ellison, New Wave icon. Harlan included Spinrad’s story Carcinoma Angels in the ground-breaking 1967 anthology, Dangerous Visions.

OK, I can’t resist, here’s another sample from Bug Jack Barron.

The honey-blonde gasped, eyes turned big (Berkeley eyes for hipstyle-campus hero Baby Bolshevik crusader adore worship eyes always those eyes before she blew him) with wonder on him, surprise-synapses whited out, and said dumbly, ‘Mr Barron…’

So we have economics, we have haves and have-nots, we have the death of idealism, we have revolution. Plus we have media, and we have politics. Media is Jack’s thing now. With one hundred million viewers each week, he’s got a lot of influence. But he’s going to have confrontations with politicians. Dark, smoke-filled rooms. Dirty politics. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, marijuana has been legalized. Of course, bread and circuses.

You know what’s a kindred story? 1998’s Bulworth.

In summary, Bug Jack Barron is a prescient precursor to the cyberpunk genre, inspired by the Beat Generation, firmly referencing 1967 America. It’s brilliant. Brilliant. Five stars.