You might, at first glance, consider "sidereal" in the
title Missing Time and Other Stories: 13 Sidereal Crossings to be a poor
choice of words, as the literal meaning of that word is "of or concerned
with the stars" - and not a single story in this collection, as you will
discover, has anything to do with the stars, or space or anything in or
near that celestial ballpark. In fact, while all of these stories that
have seen previous publication (7 out of 13) appeared in science fiction
or horror magazines, none of them are technically either of the above.
Manifest Destiny, Inc. might qualify as science fiction, since parts of
it take place on other planets, but you'd have to ignore the fact that
the "science" is a blatant façade disguising a thinly-veiled spiritual
metaphor. Or Memories Draped by the Tyrannical Spider might be found horrific
by some because it has a monster in it, but to get there they'd have to
stop thinking long enough to laugh, and stop laughing long enough to be
scared. And even these two stories barely squeak by as stereotypical "genre
pieces." What I have really been writing, since I began putting words to
paper seriously around 1988, is my personal brand of Magical Realism -
a genre which doesn't really quite exist in United States publishing, concrete-thinking
pragmatists that we are. In Magical Realism, reality does not conform to
pragmatic expectations - people, places and things are not what they appear
to be, reality not only refuses to stand still, it does occasional gymnastics
around confused protagonists.
Now rest assured, gentle reader, that Magical Realism
is not the same as surrealism, ala Kafka, nor is it some kind of mere schizoid
blathering, ala William S. Burrows. Magical Realism is generally subtler,
more gentle and literary in its approach to exploring the fringes of human
experience - though it can, on occasion, be over-the-top, as well. The
best known Magical Realists would probably be the South American writers
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude) and Jorges Louis Borges
(The Aleph & Other Stories). A couple of North American authors trafficking
in or around Magical Realism would be Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot
49, Vineland) and Philip K. Dick, author of The Man in the High Castle,
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldridtch, VALIS, A Scanner Darkly and about
50 other truly magical "science fiction" novels.
All this to say that some very strange stories lie in
wait for you in these pages, stories, hopefully, like none that you have
ever read before.
My dictionary has a second definition for "sidereal":
Measured in reference to the apparent motion of the stars. In this, we
come closer to my reason for including that word in the title of this collection.
We are all moving in reference to the apparent motion of something - significant
others, employers, religions, governments, cultures - the list of "realities"
we measure ourselves by and against is a long one, and personal to each
of us. But by what process do we select the measuring rods we will label
"real" for ourselves? To what degree do our choices connect us to or separate
us from other people and "consensus reality?" And what happens to us if
our chosen "realities" prove unreal?
If there is one overriding theme to the stories in this
volume, it is this: An ordinary Joe (or Joanne) faces extraordinary circumstances,
and discovers that everything he/she thought was real is not. He/She must
then be transformed to survive. This is literature of transformation. It
is probably, by U.S. standards, science fiction, if you count psychology
- literally the science (or study) of the soul - as the science. It is
my humble desire that these stories will qualify with you as, if nothing
more, at least interest-ing, maybe even memorable. There's not much more
I could ask...
* * *
BUT WAIT! There is one more thing I could ask:
I WANT A MOVIE!
What motivated me to write these stories in the first
place was my own inner sense of confusion, transform-ation, and of personally
inhabiting a reality not quite in the mainstream - a side-reality for sure.
Some of the stories got published; others languished in a desk drawer.
I was all along more motivated to write these stories than to publish them,
in part because I realized early on that very few markets existed for the
kind of stories I was writing - literary journals called them "too SciFi,"
while the science fiction mags said, "not SciFi enough." But, having seen
a remarkable number of "side-real" films in recent years (The Matrix, The
Crow, Total Recall, even very "literary" independent films like Paul Auster's
Lulu on the Bridge), it finally dawned on me that the kind of stories I
was writing were exactly the type Hollywood loved to make into movies.
TV shows like The New Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits (may they rest
in peace) in their day worked, on the small screen, the same side-real
vein as the big budget films. The X Files, while not episodic in the same
way as the two shows above, for many top-rated years trafficked almost
exclusively in the question "What is real?" All at once I recognized that
there is a place in our culture for the stories I tell - it's just not
where I was trying to tell them - on paper, to the daily-shrinking pool
of Americans who read.
But everybody watches movies. I am, myself, an avid movie
buff. I ran a video rental store for half a decade. I love movies - TV,
too, when it's well done. Nothing would please me more than to see my stories
adapted to the big or small screen.
It's something of a New Age commonism to believe that,
to manifest your desires in reality, you must first clearly visualize what
you want, then, without hesitation or fear, announce your vision to the
Universe – so here goes:
I WANT A MOVIE (or two or three or four...)!!!
I can see it quite clearly. I can easily visualize Holly-wood
sinking its teeth (and big special effects budget) into A World in Edgewise,
Manifest Destiny, Inc., Virgil's Reason (An Alternate Inferno), A Chameleon's
True Color or Mercuria, Rising. In my vision, episodic TV snaps up Heritage,
Or Memories Draped by the Tyrannical Spider, Be a Kathy Girl!, and Friendly
Fire. Meanwhile, adventurous independent filmmakers around the globe compete
to translate the raucous Who is the Fish? (the first "serious" story I
ever wrote, and still among my favorites), the quiet Last Dinosaur, the
apocalyptic Return of Horselover Fat, and the ethereal Missing Time to
the silver screen, with visions of Sundance haunting their dreams...
So there it is: My vision is clear, and I have made my
pronouncement. Now, help me, gentle reader! If you are a filmmaker in search
of material to adapt, please take a serious look at the contents of this
collection. If you are not a filmmaker, but run in the Hollywood or Indy
film loop, please bring this book to the attention of the right people,
that my dream may come true.
And finally, if you stand wholly outside the film-making
and publishing communities, being one of those rare and precious creatures
- the serious reader - who has found his or her way to this book purely
out of a desire to imbibe some unusual short fiction, then I thank you
for joining me here, and wish you safe passage through these 13 doors into
strange lands. May you find what you came for. If you come away satisfied,
then please, tell your friends!