Principia Discordia

 When I was in junior high, my RPG and board game friends introduced me to a card game called Illuminati: New World Order, in which players (each taking on the role of one particular "illuminati" group: the Adepts of Hermes, the Bavarian Illuminati, the Bermuda Triangle, the Discordian Society, the Gnomes of Zürich, the Network, Servants of Cthulhu, Shangri-La, the UFOs, the Society of Assassins, and the Church of the SubGenius), seek to take control of the world by taking control of various organizations/agencies (the CIA) celebrities (Ross Perot, Saddam Hussain)  locations (Japan, California, the Moonbase). This game, or at least, elements of this game, were heavily inspired by The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. I mean, I have never verified that, but I was told it at the time, and it would be very surprising to learn otherwise.  And being the particular sort of nerdy kid that I was, I decided to read the Illuminatus! Trilogy, so that I would understand more of the jokes and references in this card game. 

The Illuminatus! Trilogy is "a satirical, postmodern, science fiction–influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex-, and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, related to the authors' version of the Illuminati" (thanks wikipedia!).  It was a very weird book to be reading for young late junior high school/early high school me, and, at the very least, a couple of orders of magnitude weirder than the most similar thing I had read to that point: Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. 

This post is not about the Illuminatus! Trilogy. It is, instead, about a perhaps weirder book referenced in the Illuminatus! Trilogy. And that book is a bizarre short putative religious text called Principia Discordia. When I first read the Illuminatus! Trilogy I sort of assumed that the religion of discordianism and the texts from it were made up for the book, but then learned that they were not, and so I eagerly tracked them down at weird bookstores in Chicago.  The edition I have is the one with the yellow cover.

I was surely out of my depth in the 90s in junior high and high school reading 60s and 70s acid-soaked novels and religious tracts, and I think the main upshot of my reading these things was a brief infatuation with zen buddhism which had clearly influenced some of the contents of the text, but obviously the things we read during these formative years linger and percolate and then then the other day, FIFA awarded Donald Trump a peace prize. 

And obviously a lot of people reacted to this with the expected array of emotions. After all, it is one of the more absurd things to have happened in an increasingly absurd period of public and political life. And somewhat suddenly, I was reminded of this book which more or less begins with five commandments, several of which are intentionally self undermining:

 

Anyway, this was all pretty exciting when I was 11-14, but my mind has been returning to it now because we live in a world where an international soccer organization invents a peace prize to appease a warmonger.  Both the novel and this religious...zine (I guess) took Emperor Norton to be an important historical figure and/or patron saint. Simply put, Norton lost all his money when the boat bearing a rice shipment that he had heavily invested in sank, and that sort of radically altered his behavior. He declared himself the Emperor of the United States, Protector of Mexico, and Defender of the Jews. A colorful character in San Francisco, he started issuing his own currency, and due to some combination of charity/sympathy/good spirit, folks in San Francisco played along and honored Norton-bucks.  He also apparently stared down a mob that was planning to do violence against Chinese immigrants one time by loudly reciting the lord's prayer at them. The discordians like him because his way of going about these things sort of illustrates the socially constructed nature of things like money and political authority. Was he just a guy off his kilter or was he really an Authority in the area? Did those Norton bucks have monetary value? Well, local businesses seemed to treat them like they did, and what more is required for money to have value than for you to be able to exchange them for goods and services.

Looking back over the Principia Discordia, a lot of it is pretty cringe, though I can see why I thought it was cool and exciting as a junior high kid. But one of the fundamental things it is on about seems worth stewing on as we are ushered through this era of absurdity.  There is reality as it is without our imposition of labels and categories, and then there is the world as we describe and categorize it, and there is distance between the two.

 

When I sat down to start writing this, I thought I'd have more of a point at the end, but I realized if I keep waiting to have a good point to write things on Dreamwidth, I'll keep never writing things on Dreamwidth, so, meandering thoughts on a book from my junior high years it is.

Sci-Fi Outside the Spotlight Book Club Reflections

Back in June of 2023, ambyr and I started a book club because we had both purchased Library of America's "The Future is Female" 2 volume short story collection, and, at least for my part, I figured I would be more likely to get down to reading it if there was some structure around my plans to do so. We invited mrissa and some other folks from the scintillation discord to join us (apologies for not tagging everyone, I don't remember everyone's DW tags offhand), and found a time that seemed to work, and for the most part have met every other week since then. 

Early on, we wound up settling on reading 4 stories per meeting (mostly based around how many would be good to discuss per meeting, rather than how much people could read between meetings, though I am sure some folks appreciate only having a smallish batch to read each session).

We have now read NINE short story anthologies (though some of the anthologies are sometimes a little bit confused about what qualifies as a short story), and have renamed the group "Sci-Fi Outside the Spotlight" (rather than the original uninspired name "The Future is Female" chosen simply because that was the first two books we were reading).

The anthologies we have read so far are:

1. The Future is Female: Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women v. 1
2. The Future is Female: Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women v. 2
3. Rediscovery: Science Fiction By Women v. 2 (1953-1957)
4. Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
5. Dark Matter v. 2: Reading the Bones
6. Wandering Stars: An Anthology of Jewish Fantasy and Science Fiction
7. The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories: A Collection of Chinese Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation from a Visionary Team of Female and Nonbinary Creators
8. Latinx Rising: An Anthology of Latinx Science Fiction and Fantasy
9. A Thousand Beginnings and Endings: 16 Retellings of Asian Myths and Legends

So, having nine anthologies under our belts, and having a desire to avoid some other work this morning, it seemed like a good time to reflect a bit on the book club!  Also, if you want to read really good reflections on the stories for anthologies four through 7 and 9, pauraque has been sharing notes and thoughts on the stories and meetings.

Prior to this book club, I think my exposure to short stories was Ted Chiang's Stories of Your Life and Others, Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House, and the book Characters in Conflict (this can't be the version we had in my class, because it doesn't contain To Build a Fire, but it does have the same cover image as the version we had).

One thing I forever associate with this book is that there are four conflicts. Man vs. Man, Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Self, and the one I can never remember. Maybe man vs. machine? Man vs. Society? Let's say man vs. Protein.
 

So you could say that I was fairly new to the genre of short stories, when we started. And it's not like I'm an expert now or anything. But I am a fan! And I know to be insulted when people put book chapters in my short story anthologies! DON'T DO THIS. IT IS RUDE!

What I want to do is look back over the Table of Contents from these volumes and highlight some stories and authors that stuck with me. Some of them may be "oh, of course, Lewis, everyone knows that story/author is good" type mentions, but that's just something that you all have to deal with due to my being a relative newbie.

The Future is Female Volume 1
Space Episode, Lesli Perri (1941) — This story sticks with me as one that benefitted from being read in a book club setting. I read it and thought "okay, it's a pretty simple space adventure they're on a ship a thing goes wrong, they snap to action, etc.", and it was only due to the group discussion that I saw how it was undermining some gender stereotypes without being flagrant or in your face about it.  My understanding of the story really shifted from pre-discussion to post-discussion, even though, ultimately, it is not the deepest or most innovative story we read.

Created He Them, Alice Eleanor Jones (1955) — This is a very effective bit of horror that I have written about a couple of times before, I won't belabor it now.

The Barbarian, Joanna Russ (1968) — Joanna Russ can write. Not a surprise to anyone, I am sure. This collection also contained a CL Moore story "The Black God's Kiss" which was absolutely riveting until a very deflating ending, and it was very puzzling why that story was in a sci fi collection, but it did sort of make sense given how much Jirel of Jory seems to be an influence on Russ's Alyx stories.

The Future is Female Volume 2
Frog Pond, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (1971) — This story of ecological degradation and conflict between urban and rural outlook was unsettling in a good way. It made me want to read more by Yarbro (though, to my chagrin, most of what Yarbro is known for in her other writing is a very long vampire series, and not this kind of subtle eco-horror)

When It Changed, Joanna Russ (1972) — I guess I am going to play favorites a bit, here: if I learned one thing from these volumes it is that I needed to be reading more Joanna Russ. I have begun to remedy this. 

The Screwfly Solution, Racoona Sheldon (1977) — I don't think of myself as one for horror, but the ones that stick with me seem to be disproportionately horror-heavy. There is a not so great but not terrible Masters of Horror episode that adapts this story, but i think the story does a better job at the tone than a movie/tv episode can do. 

There are some really good stories that I've note mentioned, and some stories that were really interesting to discuss but not very good as stories which I've not mentioned here, but that's about all the time/space I have for these volumes now.

Rediscovery Volume 2
Why did we only do volume 2 of Rediscovery, I hear you ask.  Well, it is the fault of the series, since volume one covers 1958-1963, volume 2 covers 1953-1957, and volume 3 covers 1964-1968. Does that make any sense, organizationally? No. It does not. Anyway, we started with the chronologically earliest volume.

The overarching takeaway from this volume is that there is a danger in having third parties write afterwards to the stories in an anthology which seek to both provide author bios and story context.  Often those afterwards will include frustrating, inaccurate takes on the stories, and the wrong ratio of author bio to story discussion. So, just as we say "don't put chapters of books in your short story anthology", you really only have three sensible choices for who provides commentary on the stories: 1) the authors themselves, 2) translators, if there has been translation, or 3) the editor of the anthology, as the person who has the bird's eye view on the whole anthology.

Captive Audience, Anne Warren Griffith (1953) — This was an interesting story that dealt with ubiquitous advertising, and had a gendered take on roles and resistance in a corporate consumer dystopia.

The Piece Thing, Carol Emshwiller (1956) — This story is about an alien infant reaching out to humans it encounters. Emshwiller had a piece in the first Future is Female volume that I had also liked (and which featured a POV dog, iirc), but this one I think showcases her ability to capture alien POV.  I wouldn't say this is the most innovative piece (though I guess I don't know how well worn this territory was in 1956) but it does what it is doing well.

The Queer Ones, Leigh Brackett (1957) — One which definitely stuck with me. The story is about aliens getting noticed in a rural-ish setting, who, if I remember correctly, are identifiable for being redheads, maybe? But also have like the wrong number of ribs or some such. The story is playing off of communist scare tropes and has a sort of detective story vibe, but is mostly about this journalist tracking down the father of these mutant kids and then eventually helping the aliens escape persecution. 

Okay, this has taken longer to type up this much than I anticipated, so maybe I'll break it into three parts, and do three anthologies at each go.

Remember kids: if you are making a short story anthology: the contents of your anthology should be short stories!