Psychoshop

PSYCHOSHOP: SF JAZZ, B TO Z By Greg Bear

Without Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny, we would not today have William Gibson or Neal Stephenson, perhaps not even Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams.

Bester and Zelazny were among the SF jazz greats of their time. Each whirled in like golden dust-devils and disrupted the science fiction landscape, blowing new tunes in new styles and tempos, leaving glitter-speckled, disheveled admirers and a great many imitators in their wake. Other writers puzzled out some of their riffs, and improvised a few new ones of their own; but the surprise and originality of B and Z could not be duplicated.

Alfred Bester began writing in the forties, but it was in the fifties that he made his mark, just as science fiction nov­els were being published with fair regularity in hardcover, and at the beginning of the golden age of the SF paperback. His SF appeared sporadically through the sixties and seven­ties: then he seemed to fade. At the time he was declared a Grandmaster by the Science Fiction Writers of America, he was practically broke, dying, almost forgotten by the main­stream SF reader. Even with the highlights, his was not a career to be fervently desired—but it was very like the career of many musical jazz masters.

To list all the jazz masters of SF is difficult, and I'm certain to leave out many worthies. Stanley G. Weinbaum belongs, I think; Fritz Leiber, Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, Theodore Sturgeon, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Edgar Pangborn, Robert Sheckley. Ray Bradbury has been accused of being pure Sousa, but I think he's a jazz master as well.

Roger Zelazny, along with Samuel R. Delany and the quizzical Philip K. Dick, dominated the jazz style of the sixties, then settled in through the next two and a half decades to a solid, productive career with frequent, often short, award-winning masterworks. His career was long (though not long enough), disciplined, remunerative, and full of improvisations, collaborations, surprises: a career to be admired. He did not live long enough to be declared a Grandmaster, but no matter; that's a sometimes haphazard glory.

After B ester's death, Zelazny was offered an interesting opportunity. Bester had left behind an unfinished SF novel; would Zelazny finish it? He took up the challenge, and the result is unique—Psychoshop, a posthumous duet between two masters of SF jazz, a rollicking, sometimes cold, some­times hot torrent of riffs that splatters in style and flavor across the decades.

Like cool modern jazz, the tone is skewed, even perverse. The characters are breezy and practically affect-free, the epitome of pulp heroes, fifties style; they sometimes tell us what they feel, but we don't ourselves feel it. The mood is wry, fast, exhilarating, but ultimately downbeat. The book is meant to make you grin, but with a shake of your head; laughter with an edge. Bester laid down this tempo, but it was not at all difficult for Zelazny to pick it up and draw it out. Zelazny, after all, was one of Bester's literary children; what Bester pioneered, Zelazny made his own country. The match is almost (though not always) seamless.

Looking over a copy of the original manuscript is fascinating, and it's too bad it can't be reproduced in facsimile, with commentary. The typewriters change here and there, there are many handwritten corrections (but in whose hand? Bester's, perhaps; Zelazny's mostly, or an editor's?) and there are the trademark Bester sketches and typo­graphic flourishes. Students of both writers should secure a bootleg copy (not from me!) and analyze the process in more detail.

Writers like Bester and Zelazny enrich a field and provide the intellectual nutrients for intense growth, for all kinds of writers. My own style might more aptly be described as classical, with dips into avant-garde, but I love the jazz greats of SF. Their writing is a tart sorbet between heavy courses. It dissolves greasy, maudlin pretense and cleanses the palate.

Psychoshop: a dark acid curio, brisk, fast, memorable, a rare improvisational duet from two of our best.