On the evening of Tuesday, 13 March 2012, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series presented a special bonus, second March reading (“March Madness”) featuring Dr. Rudy Rucker, “the Godfather of Cyberpunk,” and Brendan Byrne (not the former Governor of New Jersey, or his formerly eponymous Arena, but Brendan C. for Carney Byrne), an up-and-coming writer who has appeared in Rucker’s speculative fiction webzine Flurb.
Kicking off the singular occasion (or should that be postsingular?), the Series’ executive curator, Jim Freund, host of WBAI’s (99.5 FM) Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (Thursdays, 1:30-3:00AM, and which has just returned to the air after being pre-empted by a pledge drive), greeted the audience; thanked the absent John Ordover, proprietor of the evening’s (and the Series’ current) venue, the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street in Manhattan, for enabling, on short notice, a second reading this month; and announced upcoming readings: on 3 April, Alaya Dawn Johnson and E.C. Myers will be reading, and on 1 May (May Day), Michael Cisco and John Shirley.
Brendan Byrne [photo below], the first reader of the night, offered a story that ran in Flurb, “There is No Comte de St. Germain For I Am He.” Set in the Bridge Bar, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge (Manhattan side) and considered to be the oldest bar in New York City (appropriate, as Byrne works as a bartender, although not there), the edgy and captivating piece centered around an immortal who has “been around at least since the invention of agriculture” and who had at some point been the titular magician and poseur, and who, disconcertingly, re-encounters another like himself.
After a short break, Freund introduced the second and final reader of the evening, Rudy Rucker [photo at top], writer, mathematician (“He’s met Gödel!” Freund exclaimed) and a former computer science professor; he was described as “a polymath, no, a polyhedron.” Best-known for White Light and his Philip K. Dick Award-winning cyberpunk novels Software and Wetware (now available in the Ware Tetralogy), he took up painting a decade ago (and has had three shows of his pop-surreal works in San Francisco); exhibited around the room, taking advantage of the SGDA’s screens-instead-of-canvases setup, were over a dozen of Rucker’s paintings (one of which was used to accompany Byrne’s story when it ran in Flurb).
Rucker read selections from the beginning, middle, and end of his 2011 autobiographical memoir, Nested Scrolls, which received the Emperor Norton Award. He had decided to write it, he related, after surviving a cerebral hemorrhage. He observed that concepts appear in mathematics years before they are utilized in physics, and revealed that he alternates writing “transreal sf” and pop-science (and “pop-math”): “They feed off each other.” He recalled his initial publication and the welcome he found at science fiction conventions.
In the question-and-answer session that followed, Rucker reminisced about meeting Robert Sheckley (whose sf was “both funny and serious”), who, after receiving a copy of White Light, showed up at the Ruckers’ door and connected his RV; expressed something less than admiration for futurist Ray Kurzweil who has “ripped off my ideas”; and reported that he had had “meetings in Hollywood” about adapting his work (it would seem that screenwriters are told not to read his books while writing screenplays based on them, only previous drafts). Finally, referring to the paintings on display, he explained that some are done while he is working on novels—he finds the “surrealistic juxtaposition” helpful—and that the images may be used to accompany (though not precisely illustrate) stories in Flurb.
The audience of just over 20 included Richard Bowes, Carol Cooper, Karen Heuler, Kim Kindya, Barbara Krasnoff, John Kwok, Lissanne Lake, Sylvia Rucker, Ian Randal Strock, and Henry Wessels. After the traditional folding-up of chairs (more than a ritual, it’s an IQ test!), the readers (Byrne only briefly) and members of the audience adjourned, as customary, to Milady’s, a nearby pub.