Quark Cognition: The Science Fiction of Doris Piserchia

Saturday, September 3, 2011

The Science Fiction of Doris Piserchia

     I have a stack of novels that I'm going to read and it represents the complete works (minus short stories) of Doris Piserchia. I can confirm beyond any doubt that she is similar to R.A. Lafferty. This is marvelous and I am thrilled to the point of busting a few neurons. Piserchia wrote 11 science fiction novels and 2 horror novels, using the name Curt Selby. These were all published from 1973 to 1983.
   I have found an interesting and antiquated website in which Piserchia's fiction is referred to as feminist. I have found other sites that classify it as feminist. I don't know why people usually refer to female writers that create female protagonists as "feminist", when it is nothing but a natural bias. All people have a race and gender bias, in which they are naturally preferential to, and view themselves as, belonging to a certain gender or certain race (skin color). I would expect a black man to create a black male protagonist; it would not be racist for him to do so. It would be his natural bias to do so. I would likewise expect a Korean to create a Korean protagonist, an Eskimo to create an Eskimo protagonist, and a female to create a female protagonist.
     It is thus of no surprise that Piserchia chooses to use a female as her protagonist, at least in the first two novels. I would expect her to do so, as I would expect a male to create a male protagonist. There is nothing in her writing that would conjure the word "feminist" in my mind. It's just really bizarre science fiction in the vein of R.A. Lafferty.
     Honestly, if public schools gave students Mister Justice, then more people would probably read. I remember being bored to the point of madness in high school, due to the required readings of so-called "important" or "classic" novels. Mister Justice is about a man that can travel through time, yet is unable to physically affect anything; he may only take pictures. Thus, he chooses to take pictures of unsolved crimes in progress in the past and apprehends the offender in the future. He ties up the offender and drops him off at a police station, with the pictures attached.
   I also want to mention that her work is OOP (out of print), yet cheap and easy to find on abebooks.com
   Here are her novels:

Mister Justice (1973)

Star Rider (1974)

A Billion Days of Earth (1976)

Earth-Child (1977)

Spaceling (1978)

The Spinner (1980)

The Fluger (1980)

Doomtime (1981)

Blood County (1981), using alternate name "Curt Selby"

Earth in Twilight (1981)

The Dimensioneers (1982)

I, Zombie (1982), using alternate name "Curt Selby"

The Deadly Sky (1983)

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About Me

I am made of particles, known as quarks and electrons, that are at least 13.72 billion years old. Although my body is very young, the constituents are very old and come and go as they please. It's astonishing that individuality exists when each one of us are made of the same basic parts. It's even more astonishing that self-awareness exists, since even objects as simple as paper clips are made of the same parts as human beings.

My body was here before I was born and it will be here after I die.

So while I am in this brief configuration known as life I try to learn as much as possible, since my personality enjoys it. My first fascination in this short life was dinosaurs; I won a Dinosaur Expert Award in kindergarten. For most of my childhood, I read about the Animal Kingdom. I also read more than 100 Choose Your Own Adventure books and numerous other young adult fiction from my school library. Since age 5, I have been reading at a sometimes voracious pace. I didn't start seriously reading science fiction until age 19, though.

My interest in politics is as great as my interest in professional sports and I drink alcohol as often as I get lung surgery. I am heterosexual, but I rarely date women and prefer to read a tale, rather than chase some tail.

Qool Quotes

"The brain, knowing that a person can't live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible. In other words, religion is the earliest form of science fiction."
-Philip Jose Farmer (1977)

"Forget Jesus, the stars died so you could be born."
-Lawrence M. Krauss (2009)

"When you ask what are protons and electrons I ought to answer that this question is not a profitable one to ask and does not really have a meaning. The important thing about electrons and protons is not what they are but how they behave - how they move. I can describe the situation by comparing it to a game of chess. In chess, we have various chessmen, kings, knights, pawns and so on. If you ask what a chessmen is, the answer would be that it is a piece of wood, or a piece of ivory, or perhaps just a sign written on a paper, or anything whatever. It does not matter. Each chessmen has a characteristic way of moving and this is all that matters about it. The whole game of chess follows from this way of moving the various chessmen."
-Paul Dirac, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1933

"You will be astonished when I tell you what this curious play of carbon amounts to. A candle will burn some four, five, six, or seven hours. What, then, must be the daily amount of carbon going up into the air in the way of carbonic acid! What a quantity of carbon must go from each of us in respiration! What a wonderful change of carbon must take place under these circumstances of combustion or respiration! A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration to supply his natural warmth in this way, by the conversion of carbon, not in a free state, but in a state of combination. And what an extraordinary notion this gives us of the alterations going on in our atmosphere. As much as 5,000,000 pounds, or 548 tons, of carbonic acid is formed by respiration in London alone in twenty-four hours. And where does all this go? Up into the air."
-Michael Faraday (1860)

"In modern war, one individual can cause the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. He could do so by pushing a button; he may not feel the emotional impact of what he is doing, since he does not see, does not know the people whom he kills; it is almost as if his act of pushing the button and their death had no real connection. The same man would probably be incapable of even slapping, not to speak of killing, a helpless person."
-Eric Fromm (1955)

“Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that people don’t have to experience it."
-Max Frisch

Quark Cognition

I may not seem like it, but I am a human.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

The Science Fiction of Doris Piserchia

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