The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

If you have not yet heard of Alfred Jarry, you were just about to.

I came across the name first in a small, brilliant-red, extremely outspoken Moroccan magazine, Gnaoua, in which one item was not only printable (by U.S. standards) but eminently reprintable—Jarry’s “The Other Alcestis.”

Turned out it was not only -able, but very much -ed. Jarry lived in France at the turn of the century—and wrote in a vein startlingly similar to the newest surreal-science-fantasy. He is currently having a revival among the avant-garde, with an off-Broadway production of his play, Uhu Roi, and new editions of his work from New Directions. He is also the founder (prophet? inventor? perpetrator? saint?) of the Science of ‘Pataphysics.

Actually the Jarry renaissance began in 1961 with a special issue of Evergreen Review, edited by Roger Shattuck (Provediteur-General Propagator for the Islands and the Americas, in the College of ‘Pataphysics).

Space limitations prevent me from attempting here what Shattuck (pessimistically) set out to perform in 192 pages complete with magnificent maps, charts, photographs and footnotes, describing the history, scope, and organization of the illustrious

College: i.e., “the self-contradictory task of defining ‘Pataphysics in nonpataphysical terms.” I can offer only some gleanings. ‘Pataphysics (according to Shattuck) is—

—the science of the realm beyond metaphysics (as far beyond metaphysics as metaphysics is beyond physics—in one direction or another).

—the science of imaginary solutions,

—the science of the particular, of laws governing exceptions (a “pure science, lawless, and therefore impossible to outlaw”).

—imperturbable in aspect. (“The pataphysician does not burst out laughing or curse when asked to fill in quadruplicate a questionaire on his political affiliations or sexual habits: on the contrary, he details a different and equally valid activity on each of the four sheets.”)

‘Pataphysics “can be seen as a method, a discipline, a faith, a cult, a point of view, a hoax. It is all of these and none of them.” And conclusively, “All things are pataphysical, yet few men practice ‘Pataphysics consciously.”

I trust this brief introduction will serve as additional explication of Mr. Kagan’s story—and perhaps bring some readers to a further study of this remarkable science. (It should also be readily observable that “Family Portrait,” the first published story of a young California electronics technician, is as fine an example of unconscious pataphysical writing as one might readily find: it appears to satisfy virtually every one of the precepts set forth above.)