Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (45 page)

The novel is set on the planet Cygnus Beta in a vague future when humanity has spread to several extrasolar planets to form a clade of cultures within an interacting multistellar society verging on the edge of speciation. There are several types of humans with different post-human powers like telepathy of several narrow and limited sorts, who can interbreed but have somewhat different characteristic phenotypes, much like dogs. Races of humanity, if you can stomach the politically incorrect but accurate term.

Cygnus Beta is something of a frontier planet, but has been a sanctuary for refugees from disasters natural and otherwise on their home planets for quite some time. It's not so much a cultural and racial melting pot as a carefully multicultural society that protects and encourages its diversity within complex and somewhat rigid overall norms and legalities.

Delarua is the main and first person viewpoint narrator, and a knowledgeable and wry one, but with some psychological problems due to a complex history with the complex family structure of her tribe and a sexual affair that could not quite be called a love affair with a man who has a circumscribed telepathic control-freak power. When the novel opens, she is second assistant to the chief biotechnician of Tlaxce Province, whose hobby—passion even—is languages.

The planet Sadira has been destroyed by an unspecified but deliberately created disaster that has killed the lion's share of the Sadiri, the survivors of whom now form the latest wave of refugees to Cygnus Beta, where early voluntary groups of Sadiri settlers have created a series of tribal taSadiri subcultures.

The Sadiri are telepaths and their central culture has long since developed a complex series of restrictive cultural norms, meditation techniques, mental exercises, moral restrictions, and so forth, to prevent their culture from degenerating into a telepathic hive-mind or something worse, and to maintain personal freedom and characterological integrity, the price of which is to render Sadiri rather uptight and stuffy personalities.

The taSadiri are Sadiri who have rebelled against this complex cultural and psychological straitjacket, or at least what they perceive as such, and have gone off to form various rebel subcultures of their own on Cygnus Beta, or been absorbed in other human cultures. But since the Sadiri gene pool has been decimated, and most of the Sadiri on Cygnus Beta are men, they must hold their noses and seek out full-blooded taSadiri or partial taSadiri to refresh their diversity, prevent undesirable inbreeding, and preserve the genetic health of the Sadiri subspecies.

Due largely to her proficiency in the Sadiri language, Delarua becomes part of a mixed team of humans from non-Sadiri subspecies and Sadiri whose mission is to travel far and wide for a full year searching for full taSadiri subcultures and partial taSadiri subcultures to seek out genetically appropriate mates for the male Sadiri.

Dllenahkh is the Sadiri honcho of this expedition, and partially because of Delarua's command of Sadiri, they form a bond that begins professionally, but slowly, very slowly, becomes what might be called a romance. But as far as the reader is concerned, it's a very sophisticated, double-culture bounded, complexly alien one, as they take the magic mystery tour of the fascinating subcultures of Cygnus Beta.

There's much more to the novel than that; family drama, political machination, cultural anthropology, landscape wonders, bureaucratic conflict, and so forth, the whole forming a full-spectrum novel that touches all the literary bases, and in so doing becomes not a "literary novel" but genuine
literature.

Published by a straightforward science fiction genre imprint. Why not? The true
literary
definition of science fiction, as opposed to schlockmeister commercial genre restrictions, is
prescriptive,
not
restrictive
—any fiction with speculative content, period.

In the best of all publishing worlds, maybe, but if editors were really allowed such ideal editorial liberty, why would Rudy Rucker have had to self-publish
Turing & Burroughs?

Read it and you'll easily enough understand why in
this
publishing world no genre publisher would likely touch this savory literary potpourri with the proverbial fork.

Rucker has never had a big best seller. But he has written many novels, all of them, at least to my knowledge, published in established SF lines, most of them at the least amusing, most of them a unique combination of rigorous but far-out mathematical and/or scientific speculation. His novels have story-lines out of Lewis Carroll on LSD (both authors are also mathematicians), lead characters who are usually everyman Candides, weird aliens galore, and a jauntily humorous gonzo style and angle of attack reminiscent of the Thomas Pynchon of
Gravity's Rainbow
and the Terry Southern of
The Magic Christian.

Turing & Burroughs
is all of that and more. Much more. It is Rudy Rucker's most ambitious novel, and while perhaps not a perfect success, it
is
a success. If
Turing & Burroughs
is not literature, then neither is
Gravity's Rainbow, Alice in Wonderland, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court,
or Lord Byron's Don Juan Or any of the novels of William Burroughs.

Yes, one of the two title characters
is
that Burroughs, and yes, the other is
Alan
Turing, World War II code cracker, father of computer science, namesaker of the Turing Test, prosecuted for homosexuality after the war, and either a suicide or assassinated by a wing of British intelligence.

Turing & Burroughs
is centrally the story of an imaginary gay affair between William Burroughs and Alan Turing. Rudy Rucker being Rudy Rucker, it's not exactly as simple as an alternate history story, and Rucker being Rucker, this central story line is not even half the bizarre, fascinating, scientific, sexual, and historical content of this delightfully humorous yet somehow thematically serious novel.

Artificial life. The Manhattan Project. Alien takeover of human bodies and consciousness. Polymorphous yet somehow R-rated group sex. Drugged transportation through the Doors of Perception. Alan Ginsberg. Jack Kerouac.

Brass balls? In this novel, Rucker's are radioactive. And yet, amazingly enough, and I can't explain how, you have to read it,
Turing & Burroughs
just does not read as pornography. What is more, Rucker, who I have observed back in the day as blatantly heterosexual, has managed to write a sweetly and truly romantic literary gay love story.

That this novel was not bought by a major publisher or at least published in a main SF line is a grim comment on the current state of the soul of the American publishing industry. Or its utter lack thereof.

I can find only two flaws in this novel, neither of which would bother almost anyone but me, because both of them arise from my specific interactions with William Burroughs. I once spent a long weekend at a literary festival with Burroughs and spent a rather boozed out dinner party in his company, and for my money, the real Burroughs was not nearly as gentle and romantic as Rucker's version.

And Rucker attempts to write in Burroughs' style. Not bad, really, but nowhere near on the level of an obscure story called
The Jungle Rot Kid On The Nod,
the
Tarzan
of Edgar Rice Burroughs as written by William Burroughs, in which Philip José Farmer nailed it to such utter and utterly hilarious perfection that I was constrained to create an anthology called
The New Tomorrows
just to get it published.

If you believe
those
minor imperfections are why Rudy Rucker had to self-publish
Turing & Burroughs,
I'll make you a sweetheart of a deal on the Brooklyn Bridge. And if you can tell me with a straight face after reading it that this book isn't both science fiction and literature I'll throw a free gold brick into the bargain.

SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR

Erwin S. Strauss
| 553 words

As you read this, I'll be at Lone Star Con 3; hope to see you there. After that. I'll be in recovery until CapClave. In the meantime, you might want to consider ConText and Archon; for mystery fans, BoucherCon. Plan now for social weekends with your favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. For an explanation of con(vention)s, a sample of SF folksongs, and info on fanzines and clubs, send me an SASE (self-addressed, stamped #10 [business] envelope) at 10 Hill #22-L, Newark NJ 07102. The hot line is (973) 242-5999. If a machine answers (with a list of the week's cons), leave a message and I'll call back on my nickel. When writing cons, send an SASE. For free listings, tell me of your con five months out. Look for me at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard.—Erwin S. Strauss

AUGUST 2013

29–Sep. 2—Lone Star Con 3. For info, write: Box 27277, Austin TX 78755. Or phone: (973) 242-5999 (10 am to 10 pm, not collect). (Web) www.lonestarcon3.org. (E-mail) [email protected]. Con will be held in: San Antonio TX (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Convention Center & nearby hotels. Guests will include: Gunn, Spinrad, Sweet, Datlow, Lansdale. WorldCon 2013. $200+.

30–Sep. 1—SacAnime. www.sacconventions.com. Sheraton Grand Downtown, Sacramento CA. Bands Akai Sky and Eyeshine. Anime.

30–Sep. 1—Mephit Fur Meet. www.mephitfurmeet.org. Whispering Woods Hotel, Olive Branch MS. Anthropomorphics (furries).

30–Sep. 2—DragonCon. (770) 909-0115. www.dragoncon.org. Many downtown hotels, Atlanta GA. Huge con; much gaming and media.

30–Sep. 2—AnimeFest. www.animefest.org. Sheraton, Dallas TX. Kenji Kamayama, Tomohiki Ishii, voice actor Terri Doty, DJ Blade. Anime.

30–Sep. 2—KumoriCon. www.kumoricon.org. Hilton and Red Lion at the Quay, Vancouver WA. Anime.

SEPTEMBER 2013

6–8—OutsideCon. www.outsidecon.com. Montgomery Bell State Park, Burns TN. An SF/fantasy relaxacon, as a camping weekend.

7—TitanCon. www.titancon.com. Wellington Park Hotel, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Science fiction and fantasy.

11–15—IlluXCon. www.illuxcon.com. Allentown PA. Note new city. For fans and practitioners of the art of illustration, in all its forms.

13–15—SF: the Interdisciplinary Genre. McMaster Univ., Hamilton ON. Robert J. Sawyer, whose papers he's donating. Academic.

13–15—NautiCon. www.nauticons.com. Provincetown Inn, Provincetown MA. Age 21 & up only. Members only on hotel premises.

13–15—Serenity Forever, 148a Queensway, London W2 6LY, UK. (+44) 07930 319-119. www.seanharry.com. Heathrow (London) UK.

13–15—Anime USA. www.animeusa.org. Wardman Park Hotel, Washington DC. Troy Baker. Theme: "Journey Back to Edo Japan".

13–15—Nan Desu Kan. www.ndkdenver.org. Marriott Denver Tech Center, Denver CO. Long-running anime event.

13–15—ConnIchi. www.connichi.de. Congress Palace, Kassel, Germany. Anime.

14–15—FantaCon. www.fantacon.com. www.albany.org. Marriott, Albany NY. No more information on this one at press.

14–16—TraCon. www.tracon.fi/en. Tampere Hall, Tampere Finland. Ross Watson. Gaming, anime, manga.

19–22—BoucherCon. www.bcon2013.com. Albany NY. Guests TBA. The world convention for fans of mystery fiction.

20–21—J-Con. www.j-con.co.uk. Riverside Court Hotel, Derby UK. Japanese popular culture.

20–22—Roc-Con. www.roccon.net. Main Street Armory, Rochester NY. SF, comics, anime, horror, gaming. 22–24—Israel National SF and fantasy Convention. www.icon.org.il. Tel Aviv, Israel.

27–29—ConText, Box 163391, Columbus OH 43216. www.contextsf.org. Doubletree, Worthington OH. SF & related games, comics & films.

OCTOBER 2013

2–4—FenCon, Box 701448, Dallas TX 75370. www.fencon.org. Addison (Dallas) TX. Doctorow, Niven, Vess, the Nielsen-Haydens, J. Ringo.

4–6—Archon, Box 8387, St. Louis MO 63132. www.archonstl.org. Gateway Center, Collinsville IL. David Weber, Vic Milan, Donato Giancola.

4–6—Can-Con. www.can-con.org. Minto Suite Hotel, Ottawa ON. Robert J. Sawyer, Hayden Trenholm, Peter Watson. Canadian SF/fantasy.

11–13—CapClave, c/o Scheiner, 1518 N. Edison, Arlington VA 22205. www.capclave.org. Hilton, Gaithersburg MD. George R. R. Martin.

18–20—ConTraflow, Box 57927, New Orleans LA 70157. www.contraflowscifi.org. Doubletree, Kenner LA. Eric Flint, John Picacio.

25–27—FurFright. www.furfright.org. Cromwell CT. Halloween party for fans of anthropomorphics (furries).

26—Goblins & Gears. www.teamwench.org/msfb. Michael's 8th Ave., Glen Burnie MD. Steampunk-themed halloween fantasy ball.

NOVEMBER 2013

1–3—HonorCon. www.honorcon.com. Greenville SC. David Weber. 20th anniversary of Weber's "Honor Harrington" series.

AUGUST 2014

14–18—LonCon 3, 379 Myrtle Rd., Sheffield S2 3HQ, UK. www.loncon3.org. Docklands, London UK. The WorldCon. £105/A, C, US$170.

Information

427 words

SHEILA WILLIAMS

Editor

EMILY HOCKADAY

Editorial Assistant

MARY GRANT

Editorial Assistant

DEANNA MCLAFFERTY

Editorial Administrative Assistant

JAYNE KEISER

Typesetting Director

SUZANNE LEMKE

Assistant Typesetting Manager

KEVIN DORIS

Senior Typesetting Coordinator

VICTORIA GREEN

Senior Art Director

CINDY TIBERI

Production Artist

LAURA TULLEY

Senior Production Manager

JENNIFER CONE

Production Associate