Surfing the Gnarl by Rudy Rucker Page A

also dealing with the social issue of many species becoming extinct.
    In order to give Frek and the
Elixir
a classy feel, I modeled the book on the “monomyth” template described in Joseph Campbell’s classic
The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
Campbell’s archetypal myth includes seventeen stages. By combining two pairs of stages, I ended up with fifteen chapters for
Frek.
    I’d like to revisit the world of
Frek
and write a sequel. I liked those characters, especially the flying cuttlefish called Professor Bumby. I had him as a professor in my abstract algebra course in grad school.
    Your webzine
Flurb
reads like a who’s who of outside-the-box SF writers. Who would you most like to get an unsolicited manuscript from, living or dead?
    I’ve had a lot of fun editing
Flurb,
and as a personal matter, it’s convenient to have a magazine which will always publish my stories. I sleep with the editor’s wife, as I like to say.
    I started with asking my old cyberpunk friends to contribute, but over time I’m getting more over-the-tran-som material from younger writers. Regarding your question, I’d be happy to get manuscripts from Robert Sheckley, Philip K. Dick, Thomas Pynchon, or Jack Kerouac. It’s not so well known that the Beats were very interested in writing SF, and they talked about it a lot. They viewed SF as an indigenous American art form, along the lines of rock ‘n’ roll or jazz.
    If you look at it in a certain way, William Burroughs’s novel
Naked Lunch
is an SF novel. But there’s a certain goody-goody nerd element among SF people that tends not to want to acknowledge that.
    What is Time? Seriously.
    Kurt Godel, the smartest man I ever met, claimed that the passage of time is an illusion, a kind of grain built into the fabric of our reality. To the extent that we can sense Eternity, it’s present in the immediate Now moment. Another point to make is that, insofar as time is real, it’s like a fluid we swim around in. As John Updike puts it, “Time is our element, not a mistaken invader.”
    Okay, I’m regurgitating quotes there. A simpler answer: time is breath. Does that answer your question?
    No. You seem to have a knack for running into famous characters: Anselm Hollo, Martin Gardner, Godel, Wolfram? If you were forming a band, which would play lead guitar? Would Turing be in the band?
    I’d probably like to be lead singer, like I was in my short-lived punk band, the Dead Pigs, in 1982. In this case I’d choose Johnny Ramone as lead guitarist. If I had a better voice, I’d want to work with Frank Zappa, but in reality I don’t think Frank would let me sing. Maybe I could play kazoo. And of course I’d be happy singing with Keith Richards or Muddy Waters.
    Being in a band was one of the more enjoyable things I’ve done. Much of my career has consisted of mathematics, computer hacking, and writing. These are solitary activities, so it was fun for me to be in a band and do something in group. Come to think of it, that’s another reason I like editing my webzine
Flurb.
    I don’t think Alan Turing was all that interested in music, but I’d enjoy having him as a friend. He wasinterested in writing science fiction, as a matter of fact, and he also had an interest in heavy philosophical trips. I’m currently writing a novel with the working title
The Turing Chronicles,
which centers on a love affair between Turing and William Burroughs.
    I feel like I’m getting to know Turing and Burroughs via the process of writing about them and maintaining internal emulations of them. I’ve often done this in the past—I call it “twinking” someone. I twinked the mathematician Georg Cantor in my novel
White Light,
Edgar Allen Poe in
The Hollow Earth,
and the painter Peter Bruegel in my historical novel about his life,
As Above, So Below.
Bruegel was the best. He’s a wonderful man.
    Do you