Re: Against the Day and William Vollmann’s Brutal Book About Climate Change

[Gary Webb]

btw, I meant to include a link that describes a comic version of The City on the Edge of Forever, but was distracted. Sad. Here it is below: 

http://sequart.org/magazine/48988/the-city-on-the-edge-of-forever-idw-re-imagines-harlan-ellisons-original-teleplay/



> On Feb 28, 2019, at 6:40 PM, Gary Webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Absolutely! 
> 
> Concerning this my paucity of knowledge on classic Sci-Fi becomes painfully obvious... 
> 
> From the quoted passages you can definitely read into it the dichotomy of classic physics, where the position and time of a given particle can be nicely determined from its initial and boundary conditions. Then, abruptly to quantum mechanics, where even the ability to take measurements, granted very tiny measurements, of physical phenomena is indeterminate. Energy distributions appear in discrete bundles... 
> 
> I think Pynchon is sort of presenting that shift in he conception of the universe, and such a shift could plausibly entail visitors, or Trespassers, from the future if your conception of time has abruptly become disjoint. 
> 
> Or, since the novel contains soooo many bifurcations, my old theory which I’ve somewhat moved away from, is that maybe through some trick of light, the Trespassers are nothing more than projections of the Chums of Chance themselves...
> 
> Another possibility might be that since Pynchon likes to use them somewhat as a meta-narrative, in the sense that characters seem to read about them, as well as actively participate in their adventures, maybe the Trespassers are nothing more than themselves from a more cynical future... an example would be like the X-Men, classic silver age 1960s X-Men visited, or Trespassed upon by like more cynical 80s-90s era versions, like Legion or Cable... Even Deadpool...
> 
> I also have been trying to get a hold of Harlan Ellison’s original script for City on the Edge of Tomorrow, I have an interesting summary below, but maybe the Trespassers are nothing more than drug addled crewmen running through a portal with no clear conception of what or why they are doing what they seem to be doing... Star Trek: TOS is the limit of my classic sci-fi knowledge... too much malted hops and bong resin! If any has any suggestions I’d be all ears (err...eyes!) 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Feb 28, 2019, at 3:22 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I have just entered the second part of the novel again where the Trespassers enter.......more to come
>> But a remark by someone about a certain kind of novel came across my bow....
>> 
>> The novel which is about a group of friends/people who were around when a Certain Bad Thing Happened
>> that No One Talks About Anymore so the rest of the novel is we readers finding out what it was...
>> 
>> TRP kinsa obverts that, right? 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Feb 27, 2019, at 6:55 PM, gary webb <gwebb8686 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> "Understanding that he would not be allowed to learn any more from Mr. Ace than whatever story the sinister traveler chose to tell, Chick arrived at their next meeting with Miles, who alone among the crew possessed the clairvoyance the situation required. At his first sight of Mr. Ace, Miles began to cry, heedless and desolate, the tears of a high professional cleric after receiving a direct message from God... Chick looked on in astonishment, for tears among this Unit were virtually unknown. 
>>> "I recognized him Chick," said Miles forthrightly, when they had returned from the ship. "From somewhere else. I know he was real and couldn't be wished away. He is not who he says he is. Assuredly he does not have our best interests in mind." ... (pg.417)"
>>> 
>>> Who and What the Trespassers are would make a great thread. 
>>> 
>>> Or in their own words: 
>>> 
>>> "We have no choice," fiercely, having abandoned the measured delivery Miles had come to associate with Trespassers. "No more than ghosts may choose what places they must haunt...you children drift in a dream, all is smooth, no interruptions, no discontinuities, but imagine the fabric of Time torn open, and yourselves swept through, with no way back, orphans and exiles who find you will do what you must, however shameful, to get from end to end of each corroded day (pg.517)" 
>>> 
>>> This is after an interesting bit over the coming conflict (WWI) which the Trespasser seems quite emphatic to Miles. Reading this novel again and again over the years I always walk away with differing interpretations about them, and the time travel bits in the book. I'd be interested in P-Listers thoughts and opinions on the matter.... 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 9:30 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>  Reading this review, and reading the first few pages of Vollman's work,
>>>> reminds me of the Trespassers in *Against the Day.*
>>>> 
>>>> From the future-- "a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies,
>>>> terminal poverty— the end ..." They are presented as out of an unspecified
>>>> apocalyptic future in the book, a tautological explication, I know, and
>>>> which I vaguely associated with a nuclear holocaust, an On the Beach future
>>>> or whatever, Pynchon's great ambiguity of various possibilities all
>>>> applying but, now, more fully full of the great presentation of the natural
>>>> world in AtD, I see it as the climate changed end times future per Vollman.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Your milage may vary even with a fuel shortage.
>>>> 
>>>> For me, taking a writer like Vollman seriously, as we do, deflates my
>>>> "balloon-boy faith", my congenital optimism, my belief in art-of-the
>>>> possible pragmatic just-in-time change as so often in history, that climate
>>>> change apocalypse will be averted as nukes were in the Cuban Missile Crisis
>>>> that something will be done to change it all.
>>>> 
>>>> But all this post can point to is Pynchon's genius in encompassing it all
>>>> up to and including "balloon-boy faith".
>>>> 
>>>> https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/568309/?__twitter_impression=true
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Sent from my iPhone
>>>> --
>>>> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l