A funny thing happened to Science Fiction in the late 1960s. It became something it had never been: cool.
SF was previously written and read by four-eyed, socially awkward nerds like I was in my preteen years. There were flashes in the fifties from writers like Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, and Philip Jose Farmer, but when the New Wave hit, suddenly Science Fiction became hip.
The sixties was a decade of cultural revolution. Film, literature, music, all were exploding with experimentation and psychological exploration. Previous standards of style, taste, and form were cast to the spaceways.
Science Fiction doesn't get the credit I believe it deserves in this regard. Other than Stranger in a Strange Land and some early Vonnegut, the counterculture passed the genre right by.
Momentum was building, but when Harlan Ellison unleashed his monumental 1977 anthology, Dangerous Visions, everything changed. This was about a million parsecs from Jack Williamson's charmingly goofy and impossibly unsophisticated The Legion of Space.
There were numerous novels from the New Wave era, but none were more important than Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron. Not only was this an important book, it was considered highly dangerous. Bug Jack Barron was originally serialized in the Britain's New Worlds Magazine, but finding a publisher for it in book form was difficult.
Despite Spinrad's editor, Larry Ashmead, saying to go all the way with Bug Jack Barron, the novel was rejected. Ashmead loathed it and called it unpublishable. The book was finally published in hardcover by Walker and Company, where it was met with very mixed feelings. Many SF personalities found Bug Jack Barron to be groundbreaking, and it was nominated for a Hugo. Others were outraged and offended.
But what's Bug Jack Barron about, anyway? It is a story about a bug man?
No. Bug Jack Barron is a savagely written, smart, vision of a future where the media rules society and the politics that drive it.
Jack Barron is an ex-Berkeley radical. He lived the life, protested the war, and battled for equality. Now he is the star of a reality TV show called Bug Jack Barron. Jack invites viewers to call in and let him know what is bugging them. Then Jack gets bugged, and when Jack Barron gets bugged, he gets results. Every week millions of people tune in for Jack to answer the phone with his signature line...."BUG JACK BARRON!"
Jack likes the limelight and the creature comforts that come with it, but the scrapper for human rights still lives in his heart. When a right wing group involved with cryogenics and immortality research comes under fire, Jack Barron gets really bugged. Though he has no idea how deep and how dangerous his latest show topic will take him.
Bug Jack Barron was obviously inspired by the Beats. While not a cut-up novel like the indecipherable The Ticket That Exploded, it does resemble the writing style of William Burroughs. Bug Jack Barron also strongly reminds me of later Splatterpunk works by Skipp-Spector-Schow.
The core of Bug Jack Barron deals with racial inequality in a particularly frank way. It's so fierce it would have modern lefts and rights stroking out in apoplectic frenzy. The language is harsh and unrelentingly confrontational. Spinrad has always had radical tenancies, but he almost takes his verbal assault too far this time. I became exhausted reading the prose at times.
There's also a lot of sex in Bug Jack Barron that becomes a little tiresome. The sexual revolution was in full swing, but many scenes were considered pornographic, which didn't hurt the book's notorious reputation.
I can't help but picture Norman Spinrad's friend Harlan Ellison in the brash, fast-talking, quick-witted Jack Barron role. The association is inescapable. Ellison penned a screenplay for Bug Jack Barron, and the film was set to be directed by Costa-Gavras. This would have been the pefect follow-up to his masterpiece, Z.
Yes, in some ways Bug Jack Barron is dated. The sixties-hip slang rings a little false for a futuristic novel. Spinrad gets his predictions wrong now and then, but Bug Jack Barron is a visionary book that foresaw the overwhelming effect the media currently has on our world. It's the most misunderstood and neglected novel in the entire history of Science Fiction. You should read it.
Written by Mark Sieber
SF was previously written and read by four-eyed, socially awkward nerds like I was in my preteen years. There were flashes in the fifties from writers like Alfred Bester, Philip K. Dick, and Philip Jose Farmer, but when the New Wave hit, suddenly Science Fiction became hip.
The sixties was a decade of cultural revolution. Film, literature, music, all were exploding with experimentation and psychological exploration. Previous standards of style, taste, and form were cast to the spaceways.
Science Fiction doesn't get the credit I believe it deserves in this regard. Other than Stranger in a Strange Land and some early Vonnegut, the counterculture passed the genre right by.
Momentum was building, but when Harlan Ellison unleashed his monumental 1977 anthology, Dangerous Visions, everything changed. This was about a million parsecs from Jack Williamson's charmingly goofy and impossibly unsophisticated The Legion of Space.
There were numerous novels from the New Wave era, but none were more important than Norman Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron. Not only was this an important book, it was considered highly dangerous. Bug Jack Barron was originally serialized in the Britain's New Worlds Magazine, but finding a publisher for it in book form was difficult.
Despite Spinrad's editor, Larry Ashmead, saying to go all the way with Bug Jack Barron, the novel was rejected. Ashmead loathed it and called it unpublishable. The book was finally published in hardcover by Walker and Company, where it was met with very mixed feelings. Many SF personalities found Bug Jack Barron to be groundbreaking, and it was nominated for a Hugo. Others were outraged and offended.
But what's Bug Jack Barron about, anyway? It is a story about a bug man?
No. Bug Jack Barron is a savagely written, smart, vision of a future where the media rules society and the politics that drive it.
Jack Barron is an ex-Berkeley radical. He lived the life, protested the war, and battled for equality. Now he is the star of a reality TV show called Bug Jack Barron. Jack invites viewers to call in and let him know what is bugging them. Then Jack gets bugged, and when Jack Barron gets bugged, he gets results. Every week millions of people tune in for Jack to answer the phone with his signature line...."BUG JACK BARRON!"
Jack likes the limelight and the creature comforts that come with it, but the scrapper for human rights still lives in his heart. When a right wing group involved with cryogenics and immortality research comes under fire, Jack Barron gets really bugged. Though he has no idea how deep and how dangerous his latest show topic will take him.
Bug Jack Barron was obviously inspired by the Beats. While not a cut-up novel like the indecipherable The Ticket That Exploded, it does resemble the writing style of William Burroughs. Bug Jack Barron also strongly reminds me of later Splatterpunk works by Skipp-Spector-Schow.
The core of Bug Jack Barron deals with racial inequality in a particularly frank way. It's so fierce it would have modern lefts and rights stroking out in apoplectic frenzy. The language is harsh and unrelentingly confrontational. Spinrad has always had radical tenancies, but he almost takes his verbal assault too far this time. I became exhausted reading the prose at times.
There's also a lot of sex in Bug Jack Barron that becomes a little tiresome. The sexual revolution was in full swing, but many scenes were considered pornographic, which didn't hurt the book's notorious reputation.
I can't help but picture Norman Spinrad's friend Harlan Ellison in the brash, fast-talking, quick-witted Jack Barron role. The association is inescapable. Ellison penned a screenplay for Bug Jack Barron, and the film was set to be directed by Costa-Gavras. This would have been the pefect follow-up to his masterpiece, Z.
Yes, in some ways Bug Jack Barron is dated. The sixties-hip slang rings a little false for a futuristic novel. Spinrad gets his predictions wrong now and then, but Bug Jack Barron is a visionary book that foresaw the overwhelming effect the media currently has on our world. It's the most misunderstood and neglected novel in the entire history of Science Fiction. You should read it.
Written by Mark Sieber
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