Re: Recreational sickness, Re: i want a new drug...

In article <7pudnQf_mKXLa3neRVn-jw@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Kat Richardson
<null.space@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

(and she wrote this too)

Richard K. Morgan plays with the idea of viruses as recreation a
little in Woken Furies.

Eight years ago, someone showed up on rec.arts.sf.composition wanting
advice on auctorial voice and on structure, and I wound up trading
e-mail with him at some point. (I don't write fiction, so this
makes no sense, but yes, I had the chutzpah to give him advice anyway.)
This dismays me because I'd always thought the snippets I wrote, I'd
*posted*, where maybe someday someone would like them well enough
to do something with them, but apparently not, go figure. Anyway,
though, I did write some snippets, basically reworking snippets
this guy had posted to bring out some of the points I was making
about them, and the bit I liked best from *my* versions was a
description of a market full of goods from Mars (the last place
the freighter in question had stopped); these included
"Tharsis allspice and Burroughs Red for pleasure, the latest
philosophical viri by Arvi Kacheti for enlightenment, or
the mass-produced Martian steroids for body weight".

Thank you for giving me this chance to quote it gratuitously. My own
words will still make up significantly less than half of this post,
though, so I'll continue doing so, even more gratuitously:
"The shop after that gave a more respectable solace, the latest
Martian virtual children, and was much patronised by ambitious
unmarried officers".

OK, might-have-beens all done with, now...

It's a minor point, but interesting, in
that the people in question have been around, doing extreme things,
for so long that they have to find a new way to alter their
perceptions or they'll be bored stiff.

(but this is Pete Tillman)

This is a pretty old idea. Someone nearby cites a Banks use, and I'm
trying to recall earlier one(s). It was the same setup, bored fuuture
richfolk looking for a new thrill.

(and back to Kat Richardson again)

The idea of extreme or life-threatening actions as recreation crops up
again and again in SF, especially in any story where bodies can be
exchanged or repaired or where lifespan is extraordinarily long or
personality is "salavagable".

'We were drunk with happiness in those early years. Everybody was,
especially the young people. These were the first years of the
Rediscovery of Man, when the Instrumentality dug deep in the treasury,
reconstructing the old cultures, the old languages, and even the old
troubles. The nightmare of perfection had taken our forefathers to
the edge of suicide. Now under the leadership of the Lord Jestocost
and the Lady Alice More, the ancient civilizations were rising like
great land masses out of the sea of the past.
'I myself was the first man to put a postage stamp on a letter,
after fourteen thousand years. I took Virginia to hear the first
piano recital. We watched at the eye-machine when cholera was
released in Tasmania, and we saw the Tasmanians dancing in the
streets, now that they did not have to be protected any more.
Everywhere, things became exciting. Everywhere, men and women worked
with a will to build a more imperfect world.
'I myself went into a hospital and came out French. Of course
I remembered my early life; I remembered it, but it did not matter.
Virginia was French, too, and we had the years of our future lying
ahead of us like ripe fruit hanging in an orchard of perpetual
summers. We had no idea when we would die. Formerly, I would be
able to go to bed and think, "The government has given me four
hundred years. Three hundred and seventy-four years from now, they
will stop the stroon injections and I will then die." Now I knew
anything could happen. The safety devices had been turned off.
The diseases ran free. With luck, and hope, and love, I might live
a thousand years. Or I might die tomorrow. I was free.'

- "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard", Cordwainer Smith, 1961. Admittedly
this is not all at quite his lyrical best, but I was sorely
tempted to quote that bit about the Tasmanians dancing in the
streets from memory...

And I must thank y'all's collective inability to name examples
older than a decade or so, for prompting me to go find <The Best
of Cordwainer Smith> (which I had unaccountably removed from my
favourites shelves), after deciding I didn't trust my memory
enough.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, writer joe@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt
.

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