William S. Burroughs

[J.D. P. Lafrance]

   I would argue that both William S. Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon are writing
within the SF genre on the grounds of what Jenny Skerl describes in her essay,
"Naked Lunch: Vision, Form, Style, Impact," as the transformation where popular
science becomes science fiction. Both authors use science or in WSB's case,
pseudo science to create what Skerl sees has "a popular mythology." Like WSB,
Pynchon makes use of all sorts of popular literary resourse in all of its
various forms - radio, movies, msuic, TV, etc. And in Burroughs' case, in
particular, Naked Lunch, he uses many conventions, characters, etc. from SF and
fantastic fiction. For example, the use of the secret agent, the alienated
private eye, the mobster boss and his gang, the mad doctor and amoral scientific
experimenter, monsters, zombies, vampires, body snatchers, space-time travel,
secret plots, secret formulas, etc. These are all staples of SF and other
off-shoots of this genre... you also see some of these things popping up in
TRP's work as well - secret formulas and plots at least - now, I'm not saying
they are strict SF writers - but elements of SF do exist prominently in their
work.

bfn,
JDL