TRP and the Science Fiction Connection

[WKLJAZZ at aol.com]

There have been several comments in recent postings about Pynchon and science
fiction ("SF") or science AND fiction. In the reference to a conference about
"science in fiction," the writer quickly noted that the conference wasn't
about "science fiction."  I understand this quick clarification because,
though I have done my best to read some of the better SF, I can only find a
small portion that seems even vaguely nourishing.  (And, sorry Oxymoron, but
Asimov's "Foundation" books are written in so leaden a style as to sink the
QEII.)  The clarification was also quick, I'd bet, because it seems that TRP
is often enough referred to as having been a significant influence on certain
SF authors, most notably the so-called "cyberpunk" authors (chiefly William
Gibson who wrote NEOROMANCER) -- indeed, I think Pynchon or GR (or something)
has been called the "Granddaddy" of cyberpunk.

{Example:  The 1992 SF novel SNOW CRASH by Neal Stephenson was compared to
Pynchon's work by at least (?) three reviewers quoted on the paperback's back
and inside covers -- "a Thomas Pynchon novel with the brakes removed"; a
cross between NEUROMANCER and Thomas Pynchon's VINELAND"; and "NEUROMANCER
meets VINELAND."  It's a darn fun and entertaining piece of SF in my opinion
and it's heroine, a 15 year-old, smart-talking, streetwise, California
skateboard messenger is notably Prairie-esque but -- knock VINELAND all you
want -- SNOW CRASH isn't even a freckle on the pinky toe of TRP's latest.}

I raise all of this because this connection between Pynchon and SF has always
baffled me.  None of his books are set in a future or alternate world.  (OK,
OK, maybe a "future" in which Dick Nixon runs a movie theater is kind of an
alternative world, but . . .)  They don't contain the kind of "fantasy" that
we tend to associate with SF.  There are no visits from aliens (again, I
s'pose there are visits from the "other side," but . . .) or colliding
planets.  What gives?

The only explanations I have been able to come up with are:  (1) For better
or worse, Pynchon's books were associated with Vonnegut's at one time and
tall, bushy-headed Kurt was linked to SF because of his Tralfamadorians (or
whatever those guys were called), even though he, too, is hardly what I'd
call a SF author; (2) GR is about a rocket and a rocket is a spaceship and
spaceships are SF, right?; and (3) the occasional non-realistic thing happens
in Pynchon's books (not just the funny or silly stuff but the outright
fantastical -- like the people appearing in someone's nose in VINELAND or
GR's Grigori the Octopus or Tyrone's trip down the Roseland toilet bowl) and,
though those events don't really dominate the texts, "regular" or "regular
serious" fiction is normally so narrowly defined and constricted that critics
just aren't happy with the non-realistic unless it can be called something
(SF, "magical realism," whatever).

Any other theories or thoughts?  I also wonder if this link is somehow a
product of the reception of Pynchon's work during a particular time (the
1960's), which reception just makes less sense now, out of context.

Will L.