AN OUTRAGEOUSLY EXTRATERRESTRIAL LOOK AT THE HUMAN CONDITION "Jody Scott knows that science fiction reaches the parts other fiction cannot reach. Like Philip K. Dick, she uses science fiction to question the meaning of reality and the nature of humanity- but saying that doesn't even hint at what a wild, original and outrageously funny writer she is." -TimeOut Magazine # When this sequel to Passing for Human and I, Vampire was written in the 1980s, it was rejected by all the major science fiction publishers who told Jody Scott it was “too far out” for commercial publication. Now available in book form for the first time ever! # Rysemian operatives are here to help us evolve. Or Else. But first they must defeat archfiend Scaulzo, worshiped as the Prince of Darkness across many galaxies, but can the devil ever really be tamed? Freewheeling cadet Benaroya has a plan- so audacious it might just succeed. Recruit Virginia Woolf’s lover, lesbian vampire Sterling O'Blivion; send her to the mothership for training and rehab by George Patton and Nancy Reagan. Detail Abe Lincoln and Douglas MacArthur to the 1950's to unravel the Gordian knot of human history, master the nuances of being a "respected male leader," survive Scaulzo's Agony Organ horrorshow that hypnotically invades their thoughts, and avoid going native. Tapdance America's child-sweetheart to superstardom as a Rysemian evangelist. ("'I come to you humans from across the void,' Shirley roared in pulpits everywhere— standing on a pile of books.”) Spring the ultimate, high-stakes trap for the devil; Benaroya the bait, Earth's fate in the balance. #
“Jody Scott is like a mad cabby who knows most of the streets in town and knows where the laughs are – get into her rig and she'll take you on a fast and furious spin through America's ideological terrain.” –Michael Shea "The greatest employment of science fiction in the service of satire. The best unknown SF writer." -Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine
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Stephen King’s Welsh Corgi, Arfy, has done it again. His short story Bite ‘Em in the Butt, first published in The New Yorker, won the coveted Peeker Award; now his novel Bowwow Up the Yingyang is topping New York Times bestseller lists on its way to Hollywood and major money. “It’s no big deal,” Arfy told this reporter modestly as we lunched yesterday at Manhattan’s popular Four Seasons. “Both of Steve’s sons, Owen and Joe, had books published recently. Of course those boys don’t need to mess with agents or other pedestrian crap; Daddy’s name does the work for them. Both their books suck big time, oboy do they ever! But it doesn’t matter how rotten you are, only how well-connected.” “Where do you get your ideas, do you mind my asking?” “From the infinite greatness of my own mind,” Arfy chuckled, wolfing down a caviar-laced pop tart. “I thought I was at my peak brilliance in Bite, but Bowwow is really making those Hollywood moguls sit up and take notice.” “How long did it take you to write Bowwow, and did you use Steve’s computer?” “Yes to both questions,” nodded Arfy. “If I’d been a Rottweiler it wouldn’t have worked so give me some credit here for sleight-of-paw Darwinian adaptation as a solution to an environmental problem serving a functional purpose—much as long-necked giraffes began having more offspring because of phylogenetic inertia, know what I mean?” “Er,” I said. “Yes, more offspring would really do the trick. But tell me, when is Steve’s daughter Naomi coming out with her first novel?” “Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,” Arfy snarled. “We writers are a jealous lot and if she gets published it’s only because Steve is her Pop; aside from that she has no talent whatever. Now I, on the other hand—” A brush fire cut our interview short, but we hope to tap Arfy for the next installment as soon as his singed fur grows back out. -Agatha Runcible Remember when Hannibal Lector was all the rage? Years ago, before zombies replaced him in the fickle heart of the public. Well this is the true story of what happened to Hannibal Lector, written by one who was there, which I can now share with you because all the guilty parties are dead and beyond the law's convoluted reach. The names have not been changed to protect the innocent-- assuming there are any.... ******** The Silence of the Hacks ******** I don't want to rain on little ole Thomas Harris' parade or put a spoke in his wheel--it's just that I'm sick and dog-tired of all these tenth rate so-called "writers" harvesting kudos and million-dollar advances for writing pure trash all the time. I mean what's the point? Hannibal Lecter can go take a long jump off a short pier--so what if the Queen Herself knighted the slimy little jerk? It just proves what a tribe of perverted bums our Leaders are, don't it? Because you are never told the truth, Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury. You are once again being fed a LIE and right now I'm going to tell you the way it really happened (which is nothing like it's reported in the so-called News of the Day, Hannibal the Cannibal being the hot story of the moment). Anyway, a bunch of us got together and said we wuz sick and dog-tired of the reading public being such a ninny, needing something as DUMB as mere cannibalism to get them to go to their bookstore and buy a book. At that time Hannibal Lecter was right here in Shoreline, Washington, which is the suburb of Seattle where me and my buddies live. He was hiding out here; it's the one place the cops would never think to look for him. One night late we formed a sort of a posse you might call it, with ropes and all.. We went to Hannibal's door and knocked loudly. When he opened the door we jumped him. We drug him out (him yellin and screamin and waving his fists, but he aint in all that good a shape from being in prison too long). He wasn't wearing his scary mask that the Warden made him wear in prison, and it woulda been more exciting if he was wearing it, but he wasn't. So we knocked Hannibal down and kicked him till he shut up whimpering. Then we drug him to that big ole maple tree that grows in front of his house--you pass it on your way to walk your dog in Boeing Creek Park; you'd probably remember the exact spot if you thought about it, anyway we put one end of that rope in a noose around his neck, threw the other end over a limb of the maple tree and we all pulled, yelling "Yo-Ho!" becuz we was feelin good. Ole Hannibal he kicked a bunch but pretty soon he was dead with his tongue stickin way out. When he was all done kicking we cut the sonofabitch down and threw the body in the trunk of my ole Chrysler New Yorker. Then we all drove back to my house. We drug old Hannibal by the legs around to my back yard which is where we cut him up using a chain saw. First the head, then the legs--we sawed the legs into nice roast-size chunks like any good butcher would do. Then the arms. Then the torso. Old Jerry wrapped most of the parts in Glad Wrap and popped them in the two old freezers on my porch. They'd do nice for Sundays all through the winter--then we fired up my barbecue, filled it with good well-seasoned hickory charcoal for a slow simmer and we took and roasted old Hannibal's left thigh just as neat as you please. Cooking time was two hours, then we placed the roast on a platter and I carved and served (bein as how it was my house), then we filled up our jelly glasses with some full-bodied Chianti, 1984 with a mellow yet tangy and pleasingly fruity bouquet, and we all fell to eatin. "More fava beans, anyone?" Caroline asked. "I'm sure enjoyin this roast," Sidney said. "This mustard crust is my favorite." We all smacked our lips, that roast was so good. The most delicious meat I ever et. I had three helpings, four glasses of Chianti and a whole mess of fava beans. Bianca, she cut herself another big slice, poured gravy on it and cut it up and et it, making smacking noises, it was so prime. "Mmm, mmm! Don't that just hit the spot. Best roast I ever bit into," then went back for more. There was some charred bits; I carved them off and threw them to my two cats Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Pretty soon everyone said "Good night" and drove off belching and picking their teeth, and I fell onto the couch in the living room where I sleep, thinking-- "Well it's not MY fault that my wholesome, honest, uplifting books get rejected because the public can't stomach that kind of stuff! I mean what the hell, better luck next time." And so saying, I rolled over, farted loudly and fell into a deep, satisfying sleep, happy as a clam in clover. And that's what REALLY happened to Hannibal the Cannibal. That other stuff they try to feed you ? That is a pure lie. Don't fall for it. Why let them manipulate your mind? Go for the truth every time; it's a lot more pro-survival. -Jody Scott “Sell, sell, sell,” I exhort the new teachers. “Put that pen in their hands! Get their signature on that line. Homo homini lupus!” quoting Dante, Cervantes, and Marcel Proust; giving pep talks, making charts, forcing them to compete with each other in a desperate frenzy; insisting that they spend every minute of their spare time collecting little bills and receipts for the IRS; or using their pocket calculator to figure capital gains breaks, health benefits, or retirement plans; or, if religious, quibbling with God; or, if not religious, polishing their teeth, curling their lashes, applying lacquer to their toenails, and preparing for wonderful, glossy dates with handsome closet cases who lift weights.
“This is the twentieth century,” I encourage them earnestly. “We must fill our time with these activities so we won’t ever need to think. If all else fails, stuff a Twinkie down your throat and go to a disco.” And I mean it. They don’t suffer the same guilt I suffer; but in a way, what they must endure is far worse. Yet I wonder. Where can it end? Perhaps I spend too many hours at the Studio. Between lessons we all mill around in libidinous frenzy, the women teachers and the men teachers and the students and myself, experiencing the same pulse of life that thrilled the poet Blake when he wrote the Songs of Innocence, or the painter Grünewald when he created his justly famous Isenheim Altarpiece. Everyone is in a mad rush, changing costume to a drumbeat in the back room, straining and complaining under the narcotic of ritual dancing, a skittery swampfire of thousand-year lost causes. Patsy Cox takes down her strapless and switches bras right there in the thick of battle, proclaiming, “Now I gotta boogaloo with Mr. Glumfa of the big feet and bad breath who steers for the dark corners. Faen! Helvete! Satan,” and other medieval curse words I’ve taught her. The male teachers all chatter at once: “Thinks she can dance and it’s torture, talk about bondage my dear, but she’s got megabucks and is generous. She likes me and I love hating myself,” At which the bell rings and we all jump out and begin gyrating like the demons in a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Maybe I’m just jaded. I don’t know. The haunting seems to be getting worse. A bleed-through from other times? I don’t know. Still, the dance biz is so agonizing it satisfies at least part of my craving for punishment. At the first lesson you give your pupil a test to determine his dancing quotient, or D.Q. as we call it in the trade. This can be an enormously satisfying little exercise. You bounce him around to the music and you say, “Well, Mr. Zilch, you certainly have a lot of potential. I’m going to give you a D-minus for what you actually know about dancing, which isn’t much, but an A for your natural talent. Now tell me, do you think those are fair grades, darling?” What can he say? He gobbles it up like popcorn. The point is, Mr. Zilch doesn’t have a friend in the world, not really, or why else would he be here? We sell graded courses in the form of brass, silver, and gold certificates, depending upon how many dances the student wants to learn. We have clever parties to build up competition between our branch studios. It costs a fortune to run a studio. You can’t sit around trading baseball cards; you’ve got to compete; you’ve got to hustle in order to get ahead and stay ahead, and drown the funny things that are going through your mind. The big dances are exciting. We hire a band and fix the hall up with streamers, confetti, gleaming punch bowls, sometimes even horns and hats. Everyone is showing off and suddenly the loudspeaker roars: “STOP THE MUSIC! STOP THE MUSIC!” Then a hush falls. Nothing is heard but a few electronic crackles in the speaker itself. Then a deeply serious and important male voice (Johnny File’s, usually) proclaims, “Lays and gentlemen, your attention please! Mr. B.J. Washout, whom most of you are lucky enough to know in person, has just signed up for a lifetime course of dance lessons. Come up and say a few words, Mr. Washout!” The spotlights search frantically, locate B.J. Washout, and follow his silver head bobbing its way to the podium on a long drumroll. Suddenly it’s Born-Again time. A fervid silence falls. Mr. Washout, torn with emotion, staggers to the microphone, clutches it in his sweating hands, takes out his handkerchief and blows his nose, absolutely overcome, and finally gets the words out. “Yes! Yes! Miss Krantz has just signed me up for a lifetime course of dance lessons.” Pandemonium. Cheers, applause, horns are tooted, streamers thrown. Mr. Washout raises his arms for silence (we must not forget that this is the high point of his entire life) and continues: “I spent my retirement savings, every last penny—” Tremendous cheers. A honk, as Mr. Washout blows his nose onto the monogrammed hanky which he then carefully stuffs into his pocket and goes on, “I’m so happy! So happy.” (A long sigh from the audience, followed by scattered applause.) “I wish every one of you could sign up for a lifetime course. I wish the whole world could come to Max Arkoff and be as happy as I am!” They help him off the stage. They leave him sobbing in a corner with his radiant teacher, who has just made a nice amount of money, depending on her contract. It is the dance of life!, the mighty hunters cornering a woolly mammoth at cliff’s edge. It is Cro-Magnon doing his brilliant wipeout job on poor dumb Neanderthal! But it takes my mind off a rush of giddiness, when for a moment I seem to be back in my beautiful Sibiu with its deer park and its vineyards, and golden sunsets, the air scented with apples and wood smoke… Something is happening to me. I hear Johnny’s voice. “STOP THE MUSIC! STOP THE MUSIC! Lays and jelman, the senior Mrs. Nussbaum who is 82 years young” (applause, whistles, cheers) “has just signed up for 40 full years of dance lessons! Let this be an example of optimism to everyone here, because she sold her iron lung to do it!” And Mrs. Nussbaum totters up gasping for air, gesticulates violently, and goes into convulsions, but the audience thinks this is some new dance step, and they applaud wildly. (read more I, Vampire at reviews.) "The people, united, shall never be divided" - old protest chant The Dog Owners of my neighborhood were understandably angry and upset when City Hall recently passed a new "leash law." Most of us have been walking our mutts in the park across the street from my house for many years now. We're the ones who always kept the place clean and beautiful (ours is an exceptionally lovely park with rugged terrain and 300-year-old trees. In the past there were trout in the creek but local overbuilding managed to destroy them)-- by removing cans, paper and miscellaneous garbage strewn around by partying teenagers, by shoring up eroding trails along the creekbed with rocks and fallen timber and especially by always picking up after our pooches... all of whom are well-trained, loving animals, as most dogs are and should be except when they've been brutalized by insane humans. Then one day we were forced to incorporate as a city (at gunpoint you might say) with a Council that loves to pass more laws and throw its weight around-- fining citizens for this or that infraction of its clammy rules, churning out endless new legislation that we are asked to fall upon our knees and obey ("Because it's The Law!" as idiots say), assessing fees for whatever it can dream up and all the rest of it... Just as most City Councils are in the habit of doing (but not the good ones). The first to be ticketed was Kathy, a Korean lady who recently suffered a stroke. The daily walk in the park with her little pug-dog, Bug, was her only exercise and Bug's too. This little guy can't walk very well. He's old and arthritic. It was easy for the cop to catch up with this pair; Kathy walks on ahead swinging her good arm to get her exercise and Bug, waddling and panting, tongue lolling, struggles to keep up... a very dangerous little mutt, Bug. But let me put that in the past tense because those two do not stroll in our park any more. Welcome to America, Kathy! The second to be ticketed was Jasper Cunningham and was he ever mad! Jasper has a sweet, gentle Golden Retriever named Mica. Like all the park regulars, Mica is beautifully trained. He would never dream of harming a soul. But like every dog he needs his daily run down the hill where people do not walk. His owner said: "They're ticketing the wrong people! Dogs don't run you off the path with their bikes and motorized razor scooters, dogs don't build fires at the base of trees that were growing here before Columbus landed, dogs don't shoot birds or dump their beer empties in the river--" Jasper managed to talk the judge into a half-price ticket, $60 instead of $120 because he said he hadn't been warned but that didn't lessen his anger at the unfairness of another cruel, blind law handed down to us from "above." Yes, there are attack dogs in the world (just as there are attack people) but to penalize everyone is not only less than sane but inevitably leads to worse problems. Why not enforce those laws already on the books-- laws that go after criminals (to call them what they are for a change): people who treat animals viciously and create the "attack dog" problem in the first place? The law looks the other way when it comes to them. That, at any rate, was Jasper's argument. "It's because dogs don't vote, pay taxes or support these lousy politicians," he fumed. And then the inevitable happened. One afternoon around four o'clock, Reba and Steve and I were out walking our canine family members--minus their leashes of course. Every day we hike down to a small hollow that boasts a pretty little clearing where we can toss tennis balls around and have the dogs chase them and come racing back, tennis ball in smiling mouth (if you don't think dogs can smile you've been sadly miseducated. I'm told that even young Arctic foxes who have never seen a human before--the lucky little devils--love this tennis ball game. Just as much as we do). But that day, something bad happened. First of all there was a man with two little kids in the clearing. None of us knew the man, he wasn't one of the regulars and the minute he saw our dogs he went into the type of hysterical fit we had seen before. He did and said all the usual things ("Oh my God! Keep them away from me! You can't be here," etc.-- picking up a stone and so on), infecting his children with his raw hysteria. And note well: this is the fellow responsible for the murder of whole species. He has no empathy for the animals that occupy the same planet as he does; he believes he is "superior" to them and that they will attack him, therefore he is justified in doing whatever he likes to them. The question to ask this guy is, "What have you done to an animal?" He's clearly exhibiting symptoms of guilt and fear of retribution. This man needs help, not new laws to bolster his insanely reactive behavior. But he soon gathered his young and stalked off. A few minutes later a police officer appeared over the brow of the hill, walking toward us. He approached Steve first. His ticket book open in his hand. "Your dog isn't wearing a leash," he pointed out brilliantly. "That's against the law in this park." Steve began to remonstrate (that means like, protest a bit when you know you are in the right) and at the same time Reba, who always carries a baseball bat on her walks to send the tennis ball spinning a little farther and faster and also to protect against stalkers and suchlike-- Reba snuck up behind the cop. Just as the cop was saying, "The law states that each of you are subject to a $120 fine or you can appear in court with or without a lawyer to present argument--" That was the exact moment when Reba hauled off and whacked the officer in the head with her Louisville slugger. When the bat connected with the cop's skull, the sound was like a watermelon being dropped ten stories down to a cement alley. SMOOSHHH! Reba wiped her bat with handfuls of grass. "That's one dead-looking cop," she observed. And it was true. Stretched full length, partly on the pebbled path and partly on the grassy verge, he was not only bloody as a newly beheaded chicken but also extremely dead. Then as the days passed, nothing much changed. Everybody came to look at the dead cop: shoppers on their way to the Fred Meyer store, grade school children walking home, even the J.C. track team running its laps would jog a trifle slower to take a leisurely squint at what lay half on, and half off, the pebbly path. Highschool kids dropped by to lay bets on the number of ants crawling in and out of the corpse's nose and open mouth in any given ten minute period. Boy Scout Troop 84 made a special project of monitoring the extra growth spurred in adjoining vegetation by runoff from the fresh fertilizer; it gave them something to do on an otherwise boring rainy day. The whole neighborhood came to stop by and gawk. And as the weeks passed we laid bets as to what would rot away first; would it be his uniform or his flesh? What would you guess? Let's see if you are right, shall we? Well, by golly, the uniform won. That tough blue weave took a long time to decompose, longer than the fellow himself, and shreds of it wound up covering his fairly white, smooth bones--but everything eventually comes to an end and today when I walk by the spot with my dog all I see are a couple pieces of whitish skull, some rotted blue uniform and finally--not a bit rusted, in fact still gleaming in the sun and hardly changed at all by time, weather, or worms-- that impressive badge of authority, his shield. -Jody Scott (A never-before-published short story by Jody Scott)
Naked we come into this world and handsomely outfitted in a new pinstripe from Big & Tall, complete with a foulard tie, we go out of it. At any rate that’s what happened to Nettie Polotnik’s husband Phil who had been dead nine years to the very day when our story begins. Philip Hart Polotnik had never been neat while he was alive (Phil died at age fifty-six, his skull broken in a car crash); he drank like a fish, played poker all night long and smelled like the nasty brown cigars he smoked (and those cigars were what killed him, according to Nettie! If it hadn’t been that accident it would have been emphysema like the late Johnny Carson). Nettie herself was the neat one in the family. Their four children, Michael, Tim, Meredith and Polly, now grown-and-gone were about average on the neatness scale, with son Timmy (once a juvenile delinquent, today a world famous oncologist; can you believe such a turn of events?) being the sloppiest of the lot, Nettie was thinking as she hummed somewhat happily while cleaning out the fridge. Funny how much junk gets collected when a person lives alone. Now why was there an open, moldy (covered with a crawling, green, slimy fuzz; ick! The smell of it—phew! Into the garbage it went)—can of tuna when the only person in this family who even liked tuna was daughter Meredith who lived in New Rochelle and had four children of her own? You’d think—but never mind what you’d think; Nettie didn’t want to dip into that old barrel of pain, regret and sorrow, why should she? She was alive, vibrant and happy, she liked living alone in peace and quiet and most of all you can’t change the past so why bother yourself with it? “I don’t know about that,” Phil said. “Reality isn’t exactly what we always thought it was, honey.” Her husband was sitting across the table in his new pinstripe suit, smoking a cigar and drinking coffee which was all wrong because he’d been dead for nearly a decade. . And yet—! “I’m not going to argue with you so butt the hell out,” Nettie snapped. Feeling tired, she didn’t have time to argue the same foolish old arguments, she had a dental appointment in an hour and had to buy gas on the way (running out of gas was always so embarrassing) and then grocery-shop. But she felt strange, very strange indeed. And there certainly wasn’t any use in snapping at poor dead Phil about it because the poor guy wasn’t even alive for mercy sake!… Something was happening to Nettie and she had no idea what, except that she was terribly dizzy and before you could say “Poof!” she was sprawled on the floor in her ratty old blue bathrobe that had come untied and was all rucked up under her. There wasn’t much pain, except for a clutching in the chest (it reminded her of Valentine’s Day in school when the kids all exchanged hearts, big shiny paper hearts that said “Be mine!” with a pretty lace banner across the front of them) but this was different, because-- Suddenly Nettie found herself up at the ceiling looking down at her body. She hadn’t realized how filthy it was up here—the entire ceiling could use a good scrubbing but most especially the overhead fixture; there were dead flies in the globe, quite disgusting but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was: leaving that funny-looking hunk of clay all sprawled out, its butt showing, right in the middle of her scrubbed kitchen floor for someone else to find which was awful but she couldn’t do anything about it, so-- “What were you saying dear?” she asked Phil but Phil was long gone, so Nettie hurried so she wouldn’t be late—very sorry about the mess on the floor but wasn’t that the way life always ended?—so no use worrying about it. Sad, but true; and with a sigh, Nettie herself was out of there. |
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