Keeeeeesy now, foax....

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

> > PS re Pynchon and sf, it has of course been rumoured that, immediately 
> > post-GR, TP was writing an sf novel as well the Mason-Dixon book.  And in 
> > the 1984 Luddite article he writes that the next great challenge will come 
> > "when the curves of research and development in artificial intelligence, 
> > molecular biology and robotics all converge".  TP also seems to have read 
> > quite a bit of sf.  However, my sense is that the incursions from other 
> > worlds in his works have at least as much to do with surrealism, the 
> > blurring of lines produced by the Tube/popular culture, and the various 
> > western mystical traditions whose legacy can be seen in Kabbalism, the 
> > Golden Dawn and the Blandian fate of Masonry.

I'd say looking at his existing work, we can find something of his 
work-in-progress, or at least speculate about it.  I mean, look at 
UNDER THE ROSE, or THE SECRET INTEGRATION.
> > The thing about Pynchon is 
that he doesn't try daft tricks 
like > twisting one of the laws of physics or assuming some close, but not
> there yet, technological breakthrough and then speculate about the
> *future* consequences for `our society'. He puts his knowledge of
> science to the service of *past* or *present* social and political
> analysis - past or present in place, as is. It's this localised
> bending of specific rules contrasted with the utmost rigidity in
> rendering the remaining topology which makes most SF so naff. I mean


This feature of pynchon's work aligns him with chaos theory, if only in 
the way in which many are "using" it--economists, for example, who have 
learned that in order to predict adequately the flucutations of the stock 
market, it is better to examine more carefully the present status of the 
system than some vague future iteration that is just that--speculative.  


oh--I was responding to Andrew Dinn's post (I erased his sign-off, sorry.)

bonnie