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Moderan (1971)

Tekijä: David R. Bunch

Muut tekijät: Katso muut tekijät -osio.

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"Welcome to Moderan, world of the future. Here perpetual war is waged by furious masters fighting from Strongholds well stocked with "arsenals of fear," earth is covered with vast sheets of plastic, and humans vie to replace more and more of their own "soft parts" with steel machinery. What need is there for nature when trees and flowers can be pushed up through holes in the plastic? Who requires human companionship when new-metal mistresses can be ordered from the shop? But even a Stronghold master can doubt the catechism of Moderan. Wanderers, poets, and his own children pay visits, proving that another world is possible. "The effect is as if Whitman and Nietzsche had collaborated," Brian Aldiss wrote of David R. Bunch's stories. Originally published in science-fiction magazines in the 1960s and '70s and passionately sought by collectors, the stories have not been available in a single volume for nearly fifty years. Like Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, and borrowing from the Bible and the language of advertising, Bunch coined a mind-bending new vocabulary. His intent was not to divert readers from the horrors of modernity but to make them face it squarely"--… (lisätietoja)
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Näyttää 1-5 (yhteensä 7) (seuraava | näytä kaikki)
These are short stories, from the 1960s mostly, and collected here in a single volume for the first time. They read almost like a serialised novel though—same main character and setting throughout.
   And it’s quite a setting. This is a future world in which the land surface has been levelled and coated in plastic, the oceans frozen or discarded into space and Nature replaced altogether: flowers and birds are now made of coloured tin and artificial trees poke up through holes in the plastic. Our main character too, though originally a flesh-and-blood human, has been transformed—organs, limbs, even eyeballs now new-metal-alloy versions, with only thin strips of flesh remaining. The result, Stronghold 10, is the clanking, clunky, occupier of a fortress, and the plastic plain is dotted with similar fortresses. Stronghold-masters are, in effect, immortal and to fill the time they wage war on one another. During the truces between wars, Stronghold 10 has fun—his idea of fun mostly being to sit and think, pondering Universal Deep Problems.
   This is exceptionally strange stuff, not least due to the idiosyncratic writing style which reminded me (a bit) of Cordwainer Smith’s weird “up-and-out” stories (“the up-and-out” being Smith’s term for interstellar space). There are other oddities too: for instance, although Stronghold-masters routinely wage total war, there are no actual descriptions of it. Also, while supposedly near-invincible, Stronghold 10 comes across much of the time as a bumbling and eccentric old man.
   So what is Moderan about? Well, by becoming artificial (or 92% so in Stronghold 10’s case) its inhabitants and their sterile plastic world are safe—immune from change of any kind in fact—and I think these stories are about the price they’ve paid for that, what they’ve lost. In particular they’ve lost most of the emotions, such as love, as seen in the stories about Stronghold 10 and his daughter (“A Little Girl’s Xmas in Moderan”). This author is clearly against science, against technology, against the whole modern world, and Moderan is his view of what we’re doing to ourselves as a species in real life: becoming impervious to all natural dangers by living lives that are ever more artificial. This definitely isn’t a weird future he’s describing, it’s David R Bunch’s view of the world we already live in (and I even found myself wondering while reading: to our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors of fifty-thousand years ago or so, might this be how we would have looked to them?).
   On the one hand, unlike the author, I’m not myself in any way cynical about science, not anti-technology or anti-the-modern-world-and-everything-in-it. But on the other hand, this book is exactly the sort of thing I read science fiction for: in the hope that every now and then, if I’m lucky, I’ll stumble across something really odd, a bit different. And this certainly is. ( )
  justlurking | Dec 15, 2022 |
The Publisher Says: A collection of chilling and prescient stories about ecological apocalypse and the merging of human and machine.

Welcome to Moderan, world of the future. Here perpetual war is waged by furious masters fighting from Strongholds well stocked with “arsenals of fear” and everyone is enamored with hate. The devastated earth is coated by vast sheets of gray plastic, while humans vie to replace more and more of their own “soft parts” with steel. What need is there for nature when trees and flowers can be pushed up through holes in the plastic? Who requires human companionship when new-metal mistresses are waiting? But even a Stronghold master can doubt the catechism of Moderan. Wanderers, poets, and his own children pay visits, proving that another world is possible.

“As if Whitman and Nietzsche had collaborated,” wrote Brian Aldiss of David R. Bunch’s work. Originally published in science-fiction magazines in the 1960s and ’70s, these mordant stories, though passionately sought by collectors, have been unavailable in a single volume for close to half a century. Like Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, Bunch coined a mind-bending new vocabulary. He sought not to divert readers from the horror of modernity but to make us face it squarely.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review
: First, read this:
“WE’LL FIGHT! We’ll fight each other. We’ll make harsh monsters, set them loose and fight such monsters across all our space. We’ll move with engines and hard, programmed thoughts. We’ll make all manner of dragons for our involvement, and we’ll overcome them. For we’ll program the conquests a little more carefully than we’ll feed in the threats. But mostly we’ll just fight each other—each other and ourselves, the truly tireless enemies.”

Fifty years ago, these stories...I really bridle at calling them stories, it feels to me more like loosely interconnected chapters of a single, too-big-to-fail novel...appeared. I wasn't aware of them. I was too young to "get" them. I am still too young to get them...they are brilliant tours-de-force of a man's vision of a future no one could possibly want, but they're likely to get anyway.

In a lot of ways, Author Bunch's world reminds me of the world that Sandy Hook took place in, and no one stopped it from happening again.
And then the flesh-man - oh, consider. CONSIDER him - the sick few that are left. Please do. Then perhaps you will see why we in our new-shining glory, flesh-strips few and played-down, pay homage to a massive stick of new-metal placed as our guide star when New Processes Land, our great Moderan, was new!

J.G. Ballard at his bleakest, John Brunner at his most sarcastic, Joanna Russ at her most misandric. SF futures don't usually age well...this one, more's the pity, has. ( )
  richardderus | Apr 24, 2022 |
I know this is considered by some a classic work, but I think reading Bunch's short stories as they appeared may have been a better experience than reading through this collection of them. Interestingly, most of them appeared in magazines I read monthly at the time these stories first appeared, and not a single one left any impression on me, unlike some contemporaneous magazine science fiction, e.g., Roger Zelazny's stories and novellas. Reading the Moderan stories through was a tedious exercise for me, since throughout Bunch sounds a single note, and yes, I get it's satire, but satire wears thin though relentless repetition. Not a favorite of mine. ( )
  nmele | Aug 7, 2020 |
How you'll respond to this collection of linked short stories (really fables) will depend a great deal on your ability to stare unflinchingly on the abyss, as the author was on a mission to afflict the comfortable and rub their noses in the rottenness of High Cold War America. That said I'm going to diverge somewhat from Jeff VanderMeer's enthusiastic introduction, where he credits David Bunch with the poetics of E.E. Cummings, the inventiveness of Philip K. Dick and the sense of body horror of Clive Barker, while at the same time celebrating that there's not been anything like this body of work before or since it's been written.

As for myself I see a body of work that is part of the dystopian literature of the apex of Cold War nuclear terror and needs to be located in that period. I would also compare Bunch's work to the satirical fiction of Frederick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth at their most acid with a certain literary gloss, or perhaps to Kurt Vonnegut with a more decided commitment to being genre science fiction. As for whether these stories are period pieces or news that remains news, well, we are still afflicted with leaders suffused with the hubris, vain-glory and sense of denial that Bunch excoriated and the dread of dehumanization and the destruction of the natural world Bunch invoked still stalks our imaginations, so yes; these stories are still worth the investment of your time. ( )
  Shrike58 | May 8, 2019 |




Moderan is back!

Moderan, the SF world of the future populated by men that are a combination flesh and futuristic metal forever seeking war, conquest and total domination. And the great war of Moderan is now underway. This New York Review Books edition of David R. Bunch’s classic is made available to readers starting today, the first time since its original publication back in 1971.

Moderan men live in Srongholds. Moderan men live and breathe war - if they are not at war, Moderan men are forever setting plans for war.

Moderan men flowed from the pen of Missouri born and bred New Wave SF author David R. Bunch (1925-2000), the oddest duck in the fringe literary pond of odd ducks. Bunch found American culture with its obsession with progress via technology a repugnant nightmare. The smiling, smooth-talking, upbeat, success driven prototypical American male of the 1950s was for him the scum of the scum, a threat to nature and a violation of human decency.

As far as Bunch was concerned, the Golden Age of Science Fiction with its rocket ships and up, up and away philosophy producing such works as Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was, to put it bluntly, shit on a stick.

To provide a taste of the author’s vision, I’ll focus on three chapters from the collection:

INCIDENT IN MODERAN
The tale is told in the first-person from the perspective of one of the Moderan men who is sitting on a chair outside his Stronghold, bored stiff since his side voted for a temporary ceasefire to let the damaged enemy rebuild so they can get back to blasting. He’s quick to tell us their brief letup has nothing to do with fair play or love thy neighbor, no, no, no – its about having a bigger and better war and thus greater quantities of hate and better chances to win honors. After all, he goes on, his own fort, Stronghold 10, is FIRST IN WAR, FIRST IN HATE, AND FIRST IN THE FEARS OF THE ENEMY (author’s capitals).

What strikes me with these Moderan men is that they might be part human, part metal (making them nearly indestructible) but it is the weakest human parts: a capacity for boredom combined with an unrelenting desire to hate and destroy while instilling fear in others. And to have these human traits made next to invincible through technological innovation in metal parts. Now that’s dangerous!

At that moment, Moderan man catches sight of a “piece of movement,” a mutant form roaming around on the homeless plastic (in Moderan man's world, the ground is covered in plastic). The thing approaches Moderan man. We read: “When he stood before me, I felt disturbed. Strangely I felt somehow guilty, and ashamed, that he was so bent and twisted and mushy-looking with flesh. Oh, why can’t they all be hard and shining with metal, and clean, like we Stronghold masters are, with a very minimum of flesh-strip holding them in shape? It makes for such a well-ordered and hate-happy life, the way we masters are in Moderan, so shiny and steellike in our glory, with our flesh-strips few and played down and new-metal alloy the bulk of our bodily splendor. But I suppose there must always be lower forms, insects for us to stride on.”

I’m quite confident readers will clearly detect the condescension of Moderan man. More metal = greatness and superiority; more flesh = weakness and inferiority. Likewise, I’m sure an observant reader will pick up the odd cadence and meshing of words. This is uniquely David R. Bunch – he wanted his future world Moderan men to have their own vocabulary and way of speaking – not as developed or nearly as sophisticated as Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange, but the language in Moderan is distinctly his own creation.

It had been nearly fifty years since the publication of Moderan. Has our culture and society moved in the direction of Moderan man? Are you familiar with the latest developments within the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How much is your life currently intertwined with technology? Is your computer an extension of you or are you an extension of your computer?

And how free are we from our own versions of condescension? Case in point: I recall reading how one world leader said immigrants from lands south of his border were not humans but animals. Sounds like Moderan might be judged by some as an ideal to be pursued.

THINKING BACK ((OUR GOD IS A HELPING GOD!)
Moderan man recounts the creation of his race. Back when the air and water turned poison, people looked to their God on high. Their God was silent. The air and land and water became more poisoned, poisoned to the point where the life of those flesh men and flesh women were on the brink of extinction. But then came the solution! Replacing flesh with steel; replacing weak hearts with strong artificial hearts. A new, improved race was born - steely Moderan man, a man no longer the plaything of time - Moderan man's artificial heart would beat forever; Moderan man's steel body would never grow old. A giant steel man stood in the middle of Moderan man's world to serve as his ideal and God. The air, earth and water could continue to grow poisonous -- no problem for Moderan man since Moderan man transcended such lowly organic considerations.

And what happened to those flesh men who refused new replacement hearts and steel? We read: "And then the flesh-man - oh, consider. CONSIDER him - the sick few that are left. Please do. Then perhaps you will see why we in our new-shining glory, flesh-strips few and played-down, pay homage to a massive stick of new-metal placed as our guide star when New Processes Land, our great Moderan, was new!"

New world, new land, new Moderan man - steel conquers all!

NO CRACKS OR SAGGING
Our future Moderan man recording these tapes reflects back on the first time he crossed over into the lands of Moderan. He comes across huge, long-legged tamping machines pounding the ground. He’s perplexed. Why are these steely monsters pummeling the earth? He’s quickly given the answer along with the background of the Moderan world by a lowly old man who has just enough metal parts to oversee these jumbo mechanisms.

Turns out, the machines are doing the flattening, the ultimate goal being to cover the earth with a white-grey sheet of uniform plastic. No trees, no plants, no animals, no oceans even (seen as excess water). The old man also tells the visitor new to Moderan that he, the newcomer, has all the markings that will schedule him for a procedure turning him into one of the elite-elite steel war-making Stronghold leaders that will secure the future for the new world of Moderan.

Here’s a snatch from the chapter that highlights how David R. Bunch developed his own vocabulary and sentence rhythm as part of creating his new Moderan world: “I looked about and far and wide strolled still on that smoothed and rolled-down earth the tall cylinder-carrying monsters, and many was the jammy ram that was hunched into the position and having a go at the jug-jug-jug, phoo-phoo-phoo, bam-bam-bam that was its main mission.”

Ah, to cross over into Moderan with its plastic and supercharged war machines. Sounds like 1950s America taken to absurd extremes. But how absurd really? Many Americans love all the war and plastic. Just look at the comic books, TV shows and movies. The more artificial, the less nature and more people, the more killing and destruction, the better. Moderan as the future USA - all life that isn’t human and isn’t American can go straight to hell. ( )
  Glenn_Russell | Nov 13, 2018 |
Näyttää 1-5 (yhteensä 7) (seuraava | näytä kaikki)
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» Lisää muita tekijöitä (1 mahdollinen)

Tekijän nimiRooliTekijän tyyppiKoskeeko teosta?Tila
David R. Bunchensisijainen tekijäkaikki painoksetlaskettu
VanderMeer, JeffJohdantomuu tekijäeräät painoksetvahvistettu
Vandermeer, JeffToimittajamuu tekijäeräät painoksetvahvistettu

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"Welcome to Moderan, world of the future. Here perpetual war is waged by furious masters fighting from Strongholds well stocked with "arsenals of fear," earth is covered with vast sheets of plastic, and humans vie to replace more and more of their own "soft parts" with steel machinery. What need is there for nature when trees and flowers can be pushed up through holes in the plastic? Who requires human companionship when new-metal mistresses can be ordered from the shop? But even a Stronghold master can doubt the catechism of Moderan. Wanderers, poets, and his own children pay visits, proving that another world is possible. "The effect is as if Whitman and Nietzsche had collaborated," Brian Aldiss wrote of David R. Bunch's stories. Originally published in science-fiction magazines in the 1960s and '70s and passionately sought by collectors, the stories have not been available in a single volume for nearly fifty years. Like Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, and borrowing from the Bible and the language of advertising, Bunch coined a mind-bending new vocabulary. His intent was not to divert readers from the horrors of modernity but to make them face it squarely"--

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