William S. Burroughs

[Lew Gramer]

I would say more that both TRP and WSB willingly create technology to satisfy 
their fictional imperatives. Neither however attempts to predicate their 
narrative or symbolic structure on any sort of actually feasible human future. 
This is (IMHO) the essence of science fiction, and so I'd say that the writing 
of both falls outside the SF genre...

I think it's significant that little if any of the "narrative" (or hallucination 
or whatever) of either writer's stories occurs in the future.

However both writers (and especially TRP) are very aware of science, technology 
and pseudotechnology, and use them lustily both as plot device and as metaphor. 
(Good illustrative examples: TRP's short story "Secret Integration", or his use 
of the Poisson distribution in _GR_, and WSB's frequent references to psycho- 
pharmacology and genetics in _Junky_, _Place of Dead Roads_, etc.)

Feel free to disagree (especially in an interesting way), but send all flames to 
the Great Bitbucket in the Sky. See ya!

							Lew