BEg2 Chap 8: Supernatural Intrusions

[Allen Ruch]

I liked Myst. I am a hardcore video game player, and I still love open worlds the best. Myst was a forerunner to so many great things, even stuff like GTA and Skyrim. Great game.

Which brings me to Cassidy. I keep re-reading that section, and even though I read "Bleeding Edge" when it first came out, maybe I just don't remember—what is there about the abyss in Deep Archer? It's often spoken of in mystical terms. I think Cassidy gives the first impression of that, beyond Maxine's initial "gee wow," that is. Cassidy remarks:

“Hard to explain. It was all just coming from somewhere, for about a day and a half I felt I was duked in on forces outside my normal perimeter, you know? Not scared, just wanted to get it over with, wrote the file, did the Java, didn’t look at it again. Next thing I remember is one of them saying holy shit it’s the edge of the world”

Pynchon loves supernatural spaces, and I think he's strongly suggesting that the Deep Web—or video games, or Myst, etc.—has the capacity to be an Other World. And not just Gibsonian cyberspace—or maybe it's just that after all? 

Maybe because weird fiction/horror is my favorite genre, I'm fascinated with the intrusions of the supernatural—or if not the supernatural, then the sublime?—in "Bleeding Edge." I mean, it's one thing in M&D, AtD, etc., but this seems to be Pynchon's most "realistic," or perhaps "historical," book. Sure, there are some things that suggest an alternate, wackier universe—the Naser, proösmia, Maxine being ok with being a stripper—but then again, there's something even weirder going on, right? 

Anyway, I won’t go into any future events just yet, I'll wait until we get there. But it's something to keep an eye on as the book develops. But I do have that question for everyone: how literal do you take Bleeding Edge? 

—Quail

PS: Sorry I know this post is all jumbled with ideas and not lucidly written, but I'm on my third Abelour.