Maps by John Sladek

Maps by John Sladek
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Whimsical SF yarns, with a lot of allusions and cultural references that non-Americans would not comprehend. The author’s tribute to other SF masters – with an emphasis on Philip K. DickPhilip K. Dick – is riveting. He also talks about Herman Wouk’s Youngblood Hawke (an old favourite of mine). Towards the end, his self-deprecatory ‘confessional’ is both intriguing as well as hilarious

Mainly I write science fiction in self-defence. It’s one way of getting to grips with a peculiar world, a world that I find Astounding, Amazing and altogether a Weird Tale. I wonder how people unfamiliar with sf manage to find their way around in our world of Watergate and Jonestown, Khomeini and Haig, robot factories and vodka-cola, Manson and Moonies and the MX missile system. I deal with this stuff as I can, and if the end product looks like satire, look at the raw material.
Writing, it should go without saying, requires solitary confinement. The writer’s immediate surroundings must exclude forest fires, screams from mental wards, head-banging music, cries of ecstasy, the anguish of infants, jet aircraft taking off and so on. While any of these distractions can be turned to some writer’s advantage, the general prejudice is against them and in favour of quiet solitude. That is why noisy cities are clogged with writers, who avoid the quiet countryside as though anthrax stalked the land.
The usual SF uniform includes a baseball cap with a NASA emblem on it, a T-shirt depicting some comic book superhero and plenty of buttons with obscure slogans on them (“QUARKS!”). If I can’t get all this, I try to make do with a silver jump suit, red cape and fishbowl helmet – jet-propelled roller skates with silver wings on the side being an optional accessory.

Riotous, preachy, snarky, smug, contumacious, sanctimonious - all the flavours are there.

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