Limited edition of one thousand copies

Spring 1979 No. 215

MOORCOCK WILLIAMS HARRISON PARTINGTON BCJTTERWORTH

INCH

NEW WORLDS
CRUCIFIED TOAD Edition

N215

EDITED BY DAVID BRITTON

JOHN MOTTERSHEAD M. J. HARRISON MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH

CHARLOTTE BULMER CHARLES PARTINGTON B. ROBINSON L. CONESA
H.NADLER AND MICHAEL MOORCOCK WITHOUT WHOM
CONTRIBUTIONS/CORRESPONDENCE
BOOKCHAIN LTD. 18 PETER STREET, MANCHESTER 2. ENGLAND.
-

CONTRIBUTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

COVER

Roland Cat

HARLAN ELLISON

Michael Moorcock

NOTES FROM THE IVORY BASEMENT

BURNING

John Mottershead

PILOTS

NEW FROG

SECURITY LEAK FROM THE FUTURE

NIKI

John Harrison

Michael Butterworth

HOEKY

Heathcote Williams
Charles Partington

BACK COVER

RJ.Proby

A SAVOY GOOD TASTE ISSUE

PRINTED BY CHARLES PARTINGTON (PAN VISUALS. NWxNWxNW) 061-789 5875

PATRICROFT MILL, LEGH STREET, ECCLES, MANCHESTER M30 ORT.
All contents copyright

1979 by contributors.

THIS ISSUE

IS

DEDICATED TO

P.J.PROBY

-Who for a brief period lived in Manchester-and is incapacitated with the same spirit
of martyred panache which he displays in life.

INTRODUCTION TO THE GREGG PRESS EDITIONS OF

PAINGOD AND I HAVE NO MOUTH AND MUST SCREAM
I

IT COULD BE argued that Harlan Ellison possesses the

romantic imagination without quite enough of the romantic
discipline. Instead he substitutes performance: Keep it fast,
keep it funny, keep 'em fazed. And this is why in my
opinion his work is so uneven, often within the same story.
dont think any other writer pleads his own cases so often
or at such length. This phenomenon supports my theory,
think. His stories are usually buried in their own weight
of introductions, prefaces, running commentaries because
each collection is a set (in the musical sense); this
I

non-fiction

is the patter designed to link material for the

is an act - a performance - and
almost has to be judged as a theatrical or musical
improvisation around a theme. The idea of working in
public, in a shop window, is anathema to me and most
other writers - to Harlan Ellison it is a natural extension of
his writing methods.

main numbers. Each story

As with

jazz, hell use a

on himself, get to

rubato technique to catch up

his original drift (tune or phrase) often

after very long digressions. His best stories are scarcely

stories at all: They are images, emotions, characters,
collages. They are often at their worst when they try to fit
genre conventions and dash themselves to fragments against
the edges and walls on the form. A Boy and his Dog is an
excellent piece of work and only bad when it tries to
become a run-of-the-mill sf story (the underground scenes).
Eggsucker (the prequel Written some years later) is better
because it doesnt try to be anything more than an
anecdote (and paradoxically is more of a well-made short
story than much of Ellisons work). Imagist writers dont
need to worry too much about plots - witness Stevenson's
best short stories - and can destroy their own conceptions
by conscientious attempts to fit them into conventional
shapes. This is often the case with Ellison whose plots can
distort the real information in his short stores. Ellisons
information is no more in his plots than is, say, J .G. Ballard 's
in his or Poes or Sternes in theirs. The information is in his
images, characters, his pyrotechnic highly oral method of
performing a piece.
Flashes of autobiography, of self-revelation, are usually
immediately disguised or obscured (for all he claims to tell
us exactly how it is). Trent, he says, in Paingod, had
reached a Now in which he could no longer support his
acts. If Trent is Ego naked and at large, we know whose ego
he represents. In this story everything works fine while the
images are coming the trip through the universes, the skid
row scenes and so on while the characters are being
described but when we are given plot it is a let-down.
The story part a pretty banal statement about there being
no pleasure without pain could easily be discarded
without the essense of the piece being harmed at all. How
much of this is Ellison's fault and how much the fault of sf
magazine editors (most of whom have probably done more
to ruin the flowering of imaginative talent than any other
single group) is hard to say.
In his introduction to 'Repent, Harlequin! Said The
Ticktockman he admits the fact that he is always late (A
fact as someone whos almost always early and an
anxiety neurotic who's terrified of missing deadlines
can vouch for. It is a hideous experience watching Harlan
limbering up for a deadline whose date has already passed)
and this, too, is a trait more often associated with a
I

performer who needs to give so much of himself to his act

he is always vaguely reluctant to begin until the last
that

possible moment, always exhausted afterwards. have met

more people like Harlan when Ive been performing with
rock and roll bands than have met at writers conferences.
It is worth noting,
think, that he has worked as a stand-up
comedian and a singer in his time and is always in demand
as a speaker, when he never fails to give a complete
I

performance. His personal life is much closer to the

personal life of, say, Al Jolson than it is to John Updike
and Im sure he prides himself on the fact. He is by no
means the only writer to work and live as he does, but he
could be one of the first to draw on performing rather than
dramatic and literary disciplines to aid him to shape his
writing. Byron and Shelley, Swinburne and Rossetti (these
two latter are probably better examples) had poetic meter
to control and give shape to their imaginations; similarly a
writer like Ballard has chosen to use literary methods to
control the flow of his creation. In America there is more

of a tradition of what could be called pseudo-oral writing

(Twain to Vonnegut) and Harlan Ellisons best work is in
this tradition, of course. But films, radio, comic-strips have
taught him more technique than, suspect, have books. In
this he breaks more thoroughly with tradition than he does
in his subject matter which is fairly conventional. He is
conscious that he is competing with visual forms and so he
seeks perpetually for immediacy for the immediacy
offered by popular entertainment, by newspapers, by rock
music, by the performers from George Burns to Lenny
Bruce whom he so admires. It is no accident that he finds
himself spiritually at ease in Hollywood, that he blossoms
on a podium, that he takes naturally to TV appearances,
that he shows on occasions a somewhat wary attitude to
the more staid gatherings of writers and critics where
performance is not expected of him.
High above the third level of the city, he crouched on
the humming aluminum-frame platform of the air-boat
(foof! air-boat, indeed! swizzleskid is what it was, with
a tow-rack jerry-rigged) and stared down at the neat
Mondrian arrangement of the buildings.
Harlan Ellison speaks about fifteen languages, all of
them English. This gift is derived from a natural relish for
words which enables him to make use of them far better
than most of his contemporaries. It also enables him to
work an audience. If he could produce his stories in front
of about two thousand people at Circus Circus, Las Vegas,
think he would probably be in his element. The trouble
with writing is that it is still a somewhat slow process, still
essentially a solitary activity, and Harlan Ellison is still
trying to beat those particular problems.
Almost all the characters in these stories are, of course,
Harlan Ellison. Harlequin the gad-fly is an idealised Ellison,
I

justifying his

penchant for practical jokes, giving

it

a social

function (one can also see him as a 'good version of

Batmans adversary The Joker). This particular story is one
of the most successful of Ellisons 60s performances, for all
that its ending tends to be a trifle ordinary and it reveals, to
me at any rate, some of his own associations childishness
with freedom and parsimoniousness' with social
responsibility' at their crudest (he is far too intelligent
and subtle a man to make such associations in any terms
but those of metaphor, should add). The story is in many

ways a thematic re-run of the earlier The Crackpots.

That he is capable of producing an sf story quite as
ordinary and dull as the average sf story he demonstrated in
1974 with the publication of Sleeping Dogs which slipped

the 60s were more radical years and they

A moment later, a new sun lit the sky as the dreadnought Descartes was strangled with its own weapon It
flared suddenly, blossomed
and was gone.
Bright Eyes was improvised around an existing
illustration in response to a challenge by that remarkable
editor Cele Lalli, whose editorship of AMAZING and
FANTASTIC in the 60s did so much to encourage the best
writers of what came to be known as the US new wave Disch, Zelazny and so on. Here we see Ellison responding to
a sympathetic audience (in the shape of Lalli) with a far
better story that is still on a familiar theme (the central
character is typically alienated, another version of 'the
artist) an-! which
suspect presents us with more original
images than appeared in the illustration. The image of the
bleeding birds is particularly good. Again we find a fairly
conventional story element, but all in all Bright Eyes is a
successful performance, if not a spectacularly ambitious
one. The Discarded (also from FANTASTIC, but six years
earlier) repeats the alienation theme and is about as
unremarkable a story as Sleeping Dogs. Ellison was here still
translating his social rejects into people like the mutants in
this story (and presenting arguments about the social
usefulness of such rejects all but identical to his current
arguments). Although he had written documentary fiction
about actual social rejects (New York street gangs) he did
not yet seem to have made the realisation that greater
immediacy, more effective imagery, could be gained by
discarding conventional sf ideas and using his own
experience. The familiar trappings of sf, the familiar
optimism of pulp stories, can be seen completely
obscuring any individual idea or language in the second
earliest story reprinted here, Wanted in Surgery. Like me,
.

make the final transference from fantasy to

in his fiction (he has written far too little comic
-for, as one ofhis heroes Gerald Kersh consistently
better method of
intensifying and exaggerating incident and imagery than
fiction)

proved,

fantasy.

Eyes of Dust is still too early a story to show anything

more than the theme, yet again, of Individuality Destroyed.
It lacks resonance. And World of Myth seems to me to lack
any saving irony to make it more than a conventional idea
in fairly conventional images, whereas Lonely
Ache is almost completely its opposite in intensity of
imagination and feeling. And here in the introduction we

receive another clue to Ellison's

The Heart Of The World at about the time wrote a story

called The Lovebeast. He wrote Deeper Than Darkness at
Consuming
I

ANALOG reader would dismiss as mere borderline sf or,

worse, fantasy. Certainly, in Have No Mouth And Must
Scream there are appropriate sf terms
computer is one of
them but essentially Ellison has learned to use the
imagery and terminology of sf as metaphor he has ceased
to be dominated by the conventions of the genre and is
making use of them. Compare that story to Big Sam Was
My Friend, a perfectly reasonable sf story which had
appeared nearly ten years earlier. The story-telling method
is much the same. The 1958 story is a well enough put
together collection of fairly familiar sf images and ideas and
the sentimental conventions of the ending are pretty
I

mawkish. By 1967, however, Ellison had learned how to

communicate his anger at the manifest ways in which the
human spirit is debased, warped, robbed of its dignity by
the stupidity and unimaginativeness of our social
institutions (he has always reflected his times but happily

performance as

method. It is the only

to play the blues, but it is a dangerous and sometimes
unsuccessful game which can ruin a human personality
vitality is equated too much with art, and reading a
story like this makes me worry, as sometimes worry when
I watch David Bowie giving himself, like some latter-day
Piaf, to his audience, if Ellison isn't exhausting himself too
quickly. Such groedy drawing on the world of dreams
requires enormous restitution unless we are to find
ourselves living in a waking dream, a reality which lacks the
potentially self-destructive working

way

pyro story a tone-poem.

Like Ellison was regarded for some years as a pretty
ordinary kind of sf writer. We both of us became highlythought-of sf writers when we decided to stop doing sf.
Then we began winning prizes for work which the average

methods

a kind of therapy in which the performer reaches for

catharsis and in turn transmits it to the audience: a

when

comedy can be an even

expressed

is a pretty lousy science fiction writer.

Possibly because we are both lousy science fiction
we independently picked on similar themes for our
early work. Ellison wrote The Beast that Shouted Love At

about the time wrote a story called

Passion.
can say about the latter is that they were both run-ofthe-mill stories. Im not sure, however, that could call my

doesnt, in fact,

writers

own

comedy

Ellison

All

a far better

it not so much by standard literary distancing techniques

or by the kind of irony found, say, in Ballard or Disch, as
by an almost frenetic oral style which balances off one view
against another. In a performer (a comedian of Bruces
stature for instance) it would emerge as Oh, so ya don't
? Like
like that version, eh? How about this one, then
all of us he is aiming to please his audience. Like some of us
he is aiming to please it without flattering it, without
appealing to universal middle-class assumptions about life,
without distorting the fundamental subject, without wiping
out the ambiguities and paradoxes which are the truth he
is trying to make us see. Because he equates the cooler
ironies of acceptable literary style with an unwillingness on
the part of the author to 'involve' himself in life (and often,
naturally, he is right) he has sought and found his own
peculiar, sometimes bizarre methods of story-telling. These
can involve an attack on syntax and grammar which only a
fool would find offensive, a wild mixing of metaphors and
a rapid bringing together of associated images done not
necessarily to achieve ironic effect, but done in an ironic
careless spirit which again
tend to identify with the
rapid, scatalogical delivery of a superb comedian (which
Ellison, incidentally, is). My only regret is that Ellison

good at pushing an ordinary bike along an ordinary

sidewalk as anyone else:

made

mirror for his temperament). He is still capable,

occasionally, of sentimentality or (the opposite side of the
same coin) obvious cynicism, but he has learned to check

ANALOG, a magazine which

1 940 or so seems to have devoted itself specifically to
the curtailment and even destruction of the creative
imagination. He seems to have gone into this enterprise
with much the same spirit of a skilled high-wire monocyclist
who for some reason wishes to show the world that he is as
naturally into the pages of

since

texture of those deeper, semi-conscious worlds of sleep: for

are using the fundamental stuff of our inner selves,

we

which needs particular forms of contemplative tranquillity

(too easily translated as death) in order to replenish its
reserves. In that sense, then, this particular story is the most
frightening in the collection, for

it

describes a t'amilar (to

me) suicide equation.

I read Ellison's introduction to Delusion for a Dragon
Slayer after conceived my performance theory. The style
itself is scarcely experimental, but the form is much more
free than most of those he had used up to that time and, in
my view, much more satisfying as a result. The interesting
thing is that he says of it that he wanted 'a density of
images, a veritable darkness of language, comparable in
narrative to what saxophonist John Coltranc blows in his
sheets of sound' style. In this story he is able to display
most of his virtues and few of his vices and it is a story
which carries for me almost the emotional intensity of my
favourite Ellison imaginative story, Croatoan.
I

And in the introduction to Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes

we find a further confirmation of Ellisons frustration with
the written word, with his looking to the techniques of the

film (and possibly the record) for his models.

'I

scream,' he

medium.

says, 'helplessly at the inadequacies of the lineal

There

is a section herein in which

try to convey a sense of
impression of the moment of death. In films could use
effects. In lype-on-paper it comes down to the enormously
ineffectual italics, type tricks, staccato sentences and
spacings of a man groping to expand his medium. Bear with
me. It is experimentation, and unless typesetters and
editors somehow develop the miracle talent of letting
writers tear the form apart and reassemble it in their
individual ways, the best Ill be able to do in terms of
freedom of impact is what got away with here
Impact could be the key word in that statement. A
good many writers particularly those who accept and
enjoy the world about them are conscious of their rivals
in films and tv and even newspapers where virtually nothing
is demanded of the audience but that they sit and be
'entertained'. Like me, like Ballard, like Disch and like,
suspect, most of us, Ellison watches a lot of television
(witness The Glass Teat) and from time to time he probably
loses the will, habit or impulse to read a book thoroughly.
He knows that his impatience with the printed word is
reflected in the majority of his potential audience. In
seeking ways of challenging the rivalry of screens and
stereos he is taking part in a movement which began almost
with the century and which now suspect is pointless in
terms of its conscious goals but worthwhile in that it
assimulates and develops subject matter, images and
dramatic techniques which go periodically to revive, expand
and enrich that most flexible medium of ali the medium
of printed fiction.
Ironically, of course, it is in this medium that Ellison who has tried his hands at most other forms excels, and
stimulates many other writers, particularly the young. He
has done a lot morefor American imaginative fiction than
many of those who currently receive the praise of a
cautious literary establishment. For one thing, his
performances are considerably tighter than those who
appear to have set out' to produce the fictional equivalent
of, say, Tubular Bells, in which one four-bar phrase is
repeated over and over again on a variety of instruments,
and in which every musical vice is combined (tautology as
an art-form). It would probably be enoughTfsEllison simply
rocked on. But, happily, he does rather more than that,
whilst retaining the virtues of a 'vulgarity' which in history
is always looked back on as legitimate and enviable
,/
expression of the romantic spirit.
He is, as have said elsewhere, a brave little beast, this
dwarfish Jew, this Mid-Western Byron, this persuasive
spieler who has been able to make me produce the first
critical introduction to a book by an individual
have
written in twelve years. Like all the finest performers, he
uses his charm almost unconsciously. And because he is
such a good and generous performer, it is extremely hard
not to forgive him virtually anything.
Which, of course, must be another reason why he
writes so many introductions and at such length.
I

Sptjro

There were other, v

Labour Cabinet Minister's depar
bungles over fare rises and delay
high-speed trains.
But it was the bizarre affaii

that finally drove Sir Richard

title of his autobiography, publish
In thi
the pro

Sexual
fantasy
of the

masked
major
S

F.

IJ

AL

fantasies
of a

killed the curator

National

Trust

show-

inquest
an
piece.
heard yesterday.
Major John
Ex- \rmy
was
63.
Powell Jones.
found dead in^a^Ujhtly-

Wrexham, North
where he moved wi

'

wife four years ago.

Ritual

Horn.

.lue.xt
Id

the

Michael Hollow

Involved,

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Lloyd
sa.d
i

H
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Spot

M. John Harrison

NOTES FROM THE

Its all right dipping a toe into the enteritic stream of opinion on which
now floats: but does one actually want to fall in? Ideology, rock
& science fiction are major cultural laxatives, ultimate sociological
of a total self-indulgence. Add them to a high birth rate, a high
standard of living & a high(er) standard of education to produce a
completely media-dominated society. Without New Worlds we wouldnt
now have John Travolta poster mags; without Bob Dylan we wouldnt now
have Abba; without William Burroughs we wouldnt now have
Christopher Priest. We wouldnt now have the Ever Open Mouth, the
Enormous Pundit & his prolonged Opinion.

the world

music

components

was now almost without principles ... it was hard to choose-unless ones
appetites came into it-between one course of action & another
When in doubt
I used to play over & over to myself a gramaphone record ... & then do what
came into my head.
Louis MacNeice, The Strings Are False.
I

. .

There is no conspiracy. We are not being manipulated by the media. We exist in a

feedback relationship with them. They are ultimately what we want. The artist (as opposed to
the communicator, or self-expressor, who is simply a mouth attached to a typewriter or a
microphone) condemns this: then the media take his condemnation & serve that up as
porridge too. The only way to opt out of such a self-abusive scheme is to stop producing, &
go & find something more interesting to fill in the time. While all the bank clerks are rushing
off to express themselves, throw off their accountants weeds &find a MEANINGFUL
EXISTENCE in ART, INDIVIDUALITY & POPULAR CULTURE, the artists & individuals
are getting jobs in banks. This enables them to earn money & grow crocuses or go
white-water canoeing at weekends.
It enables them to say nothing, which is the ultimate luxury of the artistic life.

Howd you

like to find

one

in

your laundry basket?

Blockheads

Ian Dury,

shutters are up on Punch and Judy (who mpy or may not have been the real
of it all, no-one is saying): the abandoned bunkers with their hanks of drying
are empty under the moon; the new wave has flopped exhausted on
its last beach. Its real practitioners, bemused or embittered, disgusted or simply sold out,
have long ago retreated like the tide, or crawled back into the woodwork of their glorious,

The

animating

spirit

seaweeds their angst

beach huts: leaving the field to Herbert.

Herbert is a new chap, & has many persona. He began as a bank clerk, a computeroperator or a chartered accountant & he has ended up (jelled, that is, in this his moment)
as a poseur, a popularises & a prick. He has been through a number of lady editors &
science fiction writers wives, who by persistence have taught him to grow his hair.
peeling, rococco

He has at last stopped wearing the horrible tapered trousers, shiny blue suit-jackets &
sensible shoes of his cost accountants spring, only to discover in his high summer of
headed notepaper that the moment he swapped them for the denim shoulder bag of
complete emancipation they came right back into fashion again. He is not slow to point
this out. Herbert is surprised by his own success, possibly because he wanted it so much.
To begin as a 'fan Send up with Pan or Faber (the first of whom will buy anything
purporting to be science fiction & the second anything at all as long as its cheap)! He can
still scarcely believe his luck. After years as a second or third rater, writing pseudonymous
soft porn for N.E.L to stay alive, Herbert is taking his first few faltering steps into the
limelight: & to replace the poor, old, new wave, he has invented VAT fiction.
VAT fiction is a new, masterful synthesis of the eminent science fiction of the last
two or three decades. Publishers welcome it It is literate. In its development Herbert has
been helped by many prominent figures. It is possible to mention only a few. Samuel 'Chip
Delany has made an invaluable contribution as the voice of the new liberated middle class.
Ursula LeGuin & Joanna Russ have provided a welcome female approach to eco-systems,
gynaecology, social politics & sensible prose. Herbert would also like to thank Brian Aldiss
(the Man with the Golden Pen) & Harry Harrison, who showed him how publishers can be
persuaded to reprint & reprint & reprint & reprint. But most of all he feels that VAT fiction
must stand or fall by the elements of easily-accessible middlebrow social comment &
erudition contributed by John Brunner & especially the late James Blish. The
contribution of the latter must be unparalleled: he gave his books vague Shakespearian
titles, took the names of artists, composers & metaphysicians in vain, &. as a final
demonstration of his complete lack of aesthetic values (a keynote of the new fiction),
attempted to finish Robert ChambersThe King in Yellow -a small thing in itself, perhaps,
but no better example of his signature will ever be found.
VAT fiction is ten percent inspiration & ninety percent perspiration. It is not so much
written as collected for the Department of Customs & Excise. It is a serious fiction, not
sci-fi or fantasy: it contains much patient academicism; its percipience or instinctive moral
perception is limited, its grasp of the human condition nil (although of course much of its
seriousness lies in the attempt to understandie, to pigeon-hole); &, above all, it has no
irony nor any concept of irony. A VAT writer needs a clear & sensible head. His prose was
developed by the Use of English course he took at day-release school during his training
as a bought ledger clerk or programmer. It is Fowlerised. Its images come from the cinema,
because Herbert goes a lot to see modern films; from what he calls rock music, by which
he means the music of the late 60s; & from the Modern Classics because he cant handle
the vocabulary or syntax of anything else. Herbert is pleased to see that he shares these
influences with VAT fictions critical organ Institute .
.

Under the pretence of a great upheaval, the old want of character

persists.

Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to

Baroness Von Ledebour, 1918.

(The mathematician) believes that if A or B alone can dig a garden in one hour,
they will together finish the job in thirty minutes flat. No pauses for talk, no
tangling of forks or argument about who begins at the sunny end enter his
schematised world. G
Turner, Stylistics. The horror of writers
Robert Heinlein or
Larry Niven is that they believe a mathematics of tangled forks to be ..ssible; that if the
symbols A & B are sufficiently complicated, or if men sufficiently simplified, all argument &
pause can also be programmed into the equation.

Giving the English language to the Americans is like giving sex to small children:
they know its important but they dont know what the hell to do with it.
Morton Cooper.

Many people on both sides of the fence (& of the Atlantic) in the middle-to-late sixties
saw the new wave/old guard clash as one of Realism versus Romance. It was only a

& the illiterate. Its only lasting result has been to raise the
(critically debased by the sub-literary punditry of Blish, Sturgeon & the like) from low
brow & allow the sub-academic punditry of the Foundation to debase it further.
clerical & puddingy compromise between new & old we have held up to us today as
good science fiction has no realism at all. Realism has hardly peeped up over the horizon,
except perhaps in the work of Thomas M Disch, & then fragmentarily.
As to what a science fiction of realism would attempt. To highlight some emotional
event of the real world by the use of images culled from an invented one, perhaps-to observe
the
terms
confrontation of the literate

genre

to middle

The

of the imaginary, to translate or

real in

augment

it,

thus rendering

it

more

that what, say, Ursula K LeGuin does? And her work is so simultaneously
we instinctively recoil from its comforting assumptions & maternal
has a distinctive feel to it of the Young Adults shelf of the local library
from the work of all those other decent & earnest ladies who are
packaging adult experience for the inexperienced.) The reverse would suit us better, to deal
with the imaginary in strict terms of the real.
Science fiction, after all, is only a subject matter.
The marginally improved techniques & inflated ambitions left behind by the retreat
of the new wave will not in themselves lead to the meaningful fiction which LeGuin, Russ,
Priest, Watson et al obviously believe themselves to have discovered (or synthesised:
synthesised would be a better word): ambition is futile in the face of faulty observations.
Technique & purpose are a poor substitute for eyesight. If you cannot create the real world,
how can you expect to be able to create an unreal one?

accessible. But
dull

&

isnt

unrealistic that

anthropologies.

(It

it is indistinguishable

Science

fiction

should drop

its

new

& academically-approved substance (the new

canard) & concentrate on a realistic fiction whatever

if you will: but write it out of the real world.
impossible, since fiction of this type is essentially romantic.
political fictions: without
the solid observation (and reproduction) of the actual which characterises the works of Camu.-or Orwell, The Dispossessed is puppetry of a low orderas low an order as The Moon is
a Harsh Mistress. Rhodan is bad because its romanticism is insufficiently based on the
real actions of human beings & insufficiently presented in those terms; so is
The Embedding or Dream of Wessex. None of it convinces. The people stink
(or rather they do not). The buildings are not there. The landscape is an inexpert special
effect. The canvas is daubed with crude little matchstick figures (partly because nothing
else is necessary in the fiction of simple ideology, partly because the author is simply
version of the old
its

fiction of ideas

subject matter. Write Perry Rhodan

You may claim

that this

would maintain that

it

is

is

no more romantic than Ursula LeGuin s

inept),

walking

about (talking: always talking: this is because middlebrow sf writers

background as well-observed & executed as the crude cover-paintings

stiffly

talk a lot) against a

under which we find the prize-winning prose

Comparitively few people care for art at all, & most of them care for
they mistake it for something else.
Arthur Symons, The Savoy No. 8

it

because

Most women sf writers are turning out womens fiction. So are most men. Theres
nothing wrong with it, but it isnt much of a read. People sit down & discuss things sensibly.
Its very healthy. There isnt any pain that cant be absorbed, sanitised & turned to some
purpose. Surely we can learn something from all this, smile the desperately civilised
characters. don't doubt it. The lesson is as useful as Dettol. They keep it in the bathroom
& use it to dab the cut knees of the brain. There is this urge, as visible in Delany as in
LeGuin or McCaffrey, to comfort, explain, nurse, initiate. can't abide it. Theres no irony
in it. Theres no sense of engaging the world. Acceptance, adaptation, ecology, & simple
ethical systems. It all seems like an attempt to spray air-freshener in the dustbin.
1

i want to bite the hand that

feeds me. i want to bite
that hand so badly
Elvis Costello, Radio.

have never been interested

competing for anything.

in

Ones work makes

by

its intrinsic

its

value.

If

appeal
found
I

myself competing for a

section of the audience
Id

be

mortified.

The job of an editor exists

entirely in

acceptance and

rejection; and in the

correction of spelling
mistakes.

The only way of expressing emotion

in the form of art is by finding an objective

correlative, in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which
shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external
facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is

immediately evoked.

TS
In the face of

understand,

it is

obscurantism
In

&

Eliot,

VAT fiction,

difficult for

In the face of
In the face of

with

Hamlet, 1919
its

spotty sincerity

& ledgerised attempts to

us to reanimate ourselves;

VAT fiction it is difficult for us to believe that fiction matters at all;

VAT fiction our only honourable creative guise is one of cynical

despair;

the face of

VAT fiction

all

we can say

is

Piss

off.

M John Harrison

Epilogue
At Mew Worlds we have at
last run up the black flag of
convulsive cannibalism.
Once we have boiled down
all

our enemies and choked

down all our friends we

shall in all probability

begin

eating one another.

Photographs by Anthony Skellern

New and
other worlds
As

well as being one of the

country's leading science
tid ion

writers,

Harrison

is

M. John

involved with a

new Manchester-based
venture, Savoy Books.

Andrew Caesar spoke to

Harrison the critic and
self-critic.

new book; called 'By Gas Mask and

Fire Hydrant' in the catalogue, that
isn't the name. Nor is h 'preRaphaelite sword and sorcery'.
Explain yourseif. Harrison.
'Well, we couldn't think of a title
for the one I am going to write, so
since David's obsessed by gas masks
'

New Manchester Review

When the small, orderly Johnsonian London of half a million

inhabitants which produced the dictionaries and the grammar schools
and laid down the social, ethical, religious and political guidelines,
roughly speaking, for the next 300 years, has been all but
overthrown (a victim of its own mass spawn, Mass Man)? When the
figure of mankind himself seems in the balance? How may a modern
writer acquire the necessary writing equipment, develop the presence
of mind and ignore the myriad and misleading trends of his
contemporaries sufficiently well as'to be able to produce a social,
personal and artistic triumph of, say, a Richardson, Johnson,
Tennyson or a Meridith?"

The above

is

the

most

lucid perception of the

dilemma

facing todays writer that we have yet received. It is also the most
it has prompted us to clarify certain basic
observations with regard to literature and society, and to point out
trends which appear not to have been acknowledged by the majority
of the critics of our day. We do this in the hope of imparting to
serious writers a new feeling of place and purpose within a soul-less

depressing, and

society which seems to have lost

its

need for serious writers.

That literature reflects a facet of the age from which it is

no unique observation. Even the most facile tract of
much about the motivations and tastes of authors and
their readerships. A noble age will spawn noble fiction. A frivolous
age will spawn frivolous fiction. Enviably to us living today the
great novelists of social realism were all alive during ideal times.
Populations were small with a strongly-defined and slowly-evolvipg

spawned

is

fiction tells

They presented the writer with very precise

materials and writing traditions from which to draw, and by studying
the conventions of a world small enough to be seen in its entirety
each writer was able to build on the shoulders of the one who went
before him, producing works of ever more masterful, ever more epic
proportion.

social architecture.

But this is not true today. The sudden large increase in

population which arose in the eighteenth century has increased the
quantity before the quality of mankind. Slowly, the wonderful
discoveries of science have been turned to mass production. Better
communications and transportation have dissolved the barriers of
race and custom with the result that the great traditions have been
caused to meander, and today they are like beautiful but unwieldy
brontosauri. They cannot be reproduced because the writing craft is
no longer available, but also because they are no longer in keeping.

They no

longer reflect.

The great traditions of literature have been caused to

meander. Today they are like beautiful but unwieldy brontosauri:
they can no longer reproduce.

Known knowledge

has

become so vast, philosophy so

diffuse, religion so paradoxical, science so specialised, morality so

uncertain, fashion so fleet, that a

end of

feel at the

position as

it all

when he

that he

is

man may study

all

his life

and

and

his

as uncertain of himself

still

set out. In direct proportion to the increasing

numbers and to the growing economic power acquired and asserted

by cyphers, the visionary strength of art itself to reflect and
encompass an entire age would appear to have waned.
Disillusioned by standards, our social realism critics have
developed a finely-tuned and prohibitive arsenal of censorial
weaponry. More of substance has been said by critics than has been
by our authors. In fact the true shape that literature is taking
during our century is still unresolved; the frivolity, the cause of
literatures grand descent, is publicly unacknowledged, because feelings
of social magnanimity prohibit the thought that unmotivated and
undiscerning automatons cannot nurture sensory equipment capable
of perceiving fine feeling.

said

Arthur Machen, observing the gradual deterioration of the

great traditions, has asserted that our writing has become subverted
by a bland commercialism which took root in the columns of
sensible literate periodicals

toward the end of the

last

century.

Formerly written by men and concerned with subjects of high

columns became by degrees the washing-ground of
wrote upon such topics as social engagements,

sensibility, these

women who

cosmetics, polite morality, children, fashion, aquisitive success and

the like, and it is certainly true that this kind of educated journalese

has become very prevalent in our own day. The content of even the
most stalwart of journals has been radically altered by the economic
pressures brought to bear on them by the new generations of
cultureless experts and "specialists of both sexes. Literary style
and purpose have been submerged by such new and important
considerations as the flavour of margarine. The words themselves
have been simplified and diluted to the extent that they have become
fit reading matter.
In blaming women, though, we must also blame the men
of the Eighteenth Century whose bookshop publishing houses and
instruments of literary dissemination first gave way to the demands
of the larger readerships. We must also concede that the remarkable
progress observable today in terms of welfare, education and moral
decency interests which have never occurred to the male sensibility
by itself have all come to pass as a result of the female emancipation
of the last two centuries. But the fact remains that these efforts to
upraise even the most ignorant, tasteless and most selfish pin-brain
that it is possible to find and to put money in his pocket has resulted
in the unacceptable literary dilemma we find: the man of artistic
sensibility and insight alientated from his public, his powers eroded
by a state of derangement. Such a man is condemned from the outset
by frivolity by beer drinkers, bingo players, gamblers, pleasure
seekers, sportsmen and the like, in fact by all those whose money
continues to support the debased journals and other media which
have come economically to favour the new lifestyles. He is
condemned by Ellisons Common Man, to await the moment when

the mass sensibility

is

elevated.

The man of artistic sensibility and insight is condemned

from the outset by all those whose money continues to support the
debased journals and other media which have come economically
to favour the

new

lifestyles.

Now we can plainly see that there are many good writers,
and it is not for us to complain of their lack. But because the
environment in which these writers work consists of a kind of backcloth made up of only superficially contrasting components, we find
a frightening lack of motivation. Their magnum opii become not the
encompassing works of their (and our) dreams but the minor,
small-scale masterpieces we are delighted to review on occasion.
Stymied, these good writers are forced to draw their inspiration
either from mundanity, or from a spirit of cultural resistance. In
admitting that the lineage of Levi literature has floundered into a
dreadful kitchen stew of all-sorts, however, the present editors are
able to trace a new development which may not be met with instant
regard

from the voluble and

highly-qualified critics, but

which

nevertheless has been in a kind of existence for at least a century,

and which

is

hourly taking on better shape.

In a society, as we say, whose characteristics have become

we cannot, in the final analysis, blame
.vomen or men at all, but the grubby economics of a great number of
extremely vain and self-regarding hermaphrodites) we can expect to
find no comforting or sensible developments, but we can and do
expect to find flourishing the literature of the imaginative sort.
Escape fiction, perhaps as a vehicle to a better world, or simply as a
surrogate placenta has, it seems to us, become a strongly delineated
alternative to the mainstream; and it further appears that in their
unconscious recognition of this its writers have become more able at
their craft. If we are at all uncertain about these appearances we are
firmly united in the belief that the writings of the mass genre
exponents and of fantasy writers as individuals, are nowadays more
purposeful, their content is more substantial and their words better

increasingly uniform (and

designed than in the past. They are writers who are conscious that
imaginative literature does have a workable tradition, and who are
attempting to develop this tradition. Because of their resistance to a
limp culture they have already come to reflect Twentieth Century
life,

by

and many good writers who in the past were inspired directly
and who wrote in the sensible tradition are now impelled by
new ambience.

life

their

The development, as we see it, is well

suited to the life-style

who live anywhere but in the present, who are

propelled by the clock on which the economy is run, and also by
the fear of being caught on a spot. At a trite level, diversions,
fantasies and entertainments have become the order of the day, and
if this were the only kind of literature produced we would not
of a people

bother to waste our ink further. But because an abundance of good

imaginative writing is also detectable we are of the mind that we are
in the midst of a literary evolution still in the early stages of its
flowering. The good writers are good because they are not simply
pandering to the urge to escape but because they are being drawn to
the writing by a rather more complex influence-to-evolve which they
perceive not in the environment (which they hope to transcend),

but

in

themselves.

This period in which the tradition of imaginative literature

has dominated and which scarcely needs reiterating here has origins
which are traceable to Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley and Peacock,
and (later) to Aubrey Beardsley. On the Continent, where writers
have to a greater extent been the observers of the intensive
commercialisation of Britain and the US, and therefore have been
more objectively placed, the tradition has encompassed such writers
as Jarry, Lautreamont, Anatole France, the Surrealists and Dadaists.
The modern American scene has been dominated by William
Burroughs, and a whole campus of ironic imagists including Barth,
Sladek and Disch, and most importantly by Harlan Ellison. In our
own country Machen, Lindsay, Wells, the neo-Romantics, Peake, and
today Ballard, Heathcote Williams, and the movement about
Moorcock (Harrison; Jones, et al), have held sway.

This tradition has evolved out of the imperative of the

higher sensibilities to revolt at the primitive and trivial, yet it has
been delineated almost entirely at our end of the century by

Moorcock.
Whereas Thomas Love Peacock recorded the choppy
transmutation of ages Classical and Romantic, whereas Jarry reacted
with disdainful satire against mechanised society, whereas Poe, Wells

and Lovecraft variously extrapolated the agonies of the trapped soul

as well as the technological dooms and gains of the period, whereas
Beardsley became perversely pure, and the neo-Romanticsgave form
to a fantasy born of Armageddon all exponents of the new
tradition now caught up in its tidal flow Moorcock alone has
consciously and consistently engineered the construction of
conditions favourable to the imaginative writer. Here is a writer who
has come in at both ends of the tradition, but who has never been in
danger of disappearing up the posterior end as many critics once
hoped. With the mass market fantasy novels of Elric and Dorian
Hawkmoon, the antoning Alien Heat conversation novels (perhaps
influenced more than we have suspected till now by Peacock), and
the ironic Cornelius books (which derive from his purposeful
.chiselling of the New Worlds platform), he has done most to define
e trend and further shown that this trend belongs to a tradition.
If we may be forgiven these vanities, and come to our
is now a very healthy main
is having a rough passage. The
is true is the root cause of the modern
dilemma, and the reason why the book reviews of
contemporary literary critics, who have buried their heads in the

point, the literature of the imagination

tradition, whereas the social novel

inability to perceive that this

writer's

sand, rarely affect book sales. Imaginative writing is of greater

significance than social writing because it is more needed, because

from the true conditions of the writer. It is more needed

because it illuminates the paths of the soul. It has become the
"truer literature.

derives

it

The
a very healthy

inability to perceive that the imaginative novel

main

is

now

is the root cause of the modern writers

having a rough passage.

tradition

dilemma. The social novel

is

The works for which our slight monologue serves as

some of which are included in the present journal and
may be found in companion magazines and books,
our own interests and influences which we have encountered
along our paths. We feel that the pieces are not incongruously
placed, though at first glance, to the sensible eye, they may appear
to be so. The existential bohemianism, the appreciation of pure
fantasy for its own sake, the strong empathy with disappearing
Nature and the heroic figure, the fascination with space exploration

introduction,
others of which
reflect

and with the fictions of newspapers, above all the concern of

literature which refuses to allow the banal mind to lie easily, these
concerns are all humbly presented as the "traditions of the tradition.
This tradition is directed toward a much-needed spiritual development
of the human race. It is needed to redress the hard technological
gains from which we stand, by an obscuring amalgamation of
bureaucratic technology and somatic soap opera of immense drivel
and not by atomic war, to be obliterated.
M. Butterworth

"

HEATHCOTE WILLIAMS

Security leak from

the future

Dr. Strong standing in

a 500,000

volt,

500,000 cycle electro-magnetic

field as

photographed in 191 7.

or

Things liberation
Incorporeal clowning in the Kirlian Circus

Electro-bioluminescence, Kirlian photography,

PhotoPsychography, Electro-photography is some of the
jargon science now used to describe the process of
recording the aura.

The aura has been represented in prehistoric rock

paintings, and is clearly defined in the works of Paracelsus,
Swedenbourg, William Blake, Rudolf Steiner, Annie Besant
and many more. Every religious painting that shows a halo
is another example of the pre-scientific consciousness of
these emanations.

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,

The earth and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light.
William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality

These instinctual observations were in a sense a

now proven, a
little superfluously perhaps for the ardent occultist, but
proven for those who required it, that both objects and
organisms emit light when seduced by the right force-field,
even in a darkened room.
security leak from the future. Science has

The geography of the aura can now be

mapped on photographic film.

tentatively

The speediest explanation of the process is that

electrons are liberated from the subject material by field
emission, and accelerated across an air gap to give off bursts
of light in collision with air molecules. The first high-voltage
photograph was a contact print taken by a man named
Carstone in 1842. In 1893 Nikola Tesla, using his own
powerful Tesla coil, took some, leading to a rash of

experiments at the end of the nineteenth century in the

U.S.A., France, Czechoslovakia, and Russia. But auravision
was virtually ignored in the twentieth century until the
Kirlians, a Russian husband and wife team, became
obsessed with it in the nineteen fifties.

essences which can withstand mortal vandalism, and which

led two Soviet scientists to catch up with what spiritualists
had known all along by christening it the Biological Plasma
Body, a counterpart body of energy.

The body
1

The aura, or what Paracelsus called the 'star body is

revealed on photographic film when an object or part of an
is placed in contact with it, and surrounded by a
field of high frequency electrical currents. Fibrillating
rushes of energy can be seen leaking out through micochannels in matter and flesh: the same electronic
hieroglyphs that a psychic sees when placing an object or a
person in his or her own bodily force-field.
,

organism

mobile yantra.

is

It

Semyon Davidovich

Kirlian, studying his early

pictures (acquired at the price of several severe jolts)

wondered: Where
is it going?

is

the caravan of lights

coming from?

Where

but the bio-plasma

is

a swirling

daisy will

is affected by the atmosphere and other cosmic

occurrences. Disturbances of the sun change the whole
plasmic balance of the universe resulting in measurable

physical changes in organisms.

The eleven and a half year

human bioplasma, and

solar flare cycle radically affects the

often incinerates

Some of them are prophetic. The Kirlians found that

in energy patterns showed up in an electrophotograph long before they were experienced in the body
of the subject (an early indication of its potential use in
medical diagnosis, though it hasn't yet been taken up).
confusions

static,

reacts to cosmic disturbances.

flash on solar flares and reflect them in a Kirlian snap-shot.

The bio-plasmic body, the energy envelope (which is always

open)

it:

the frequency of wars every eleven and

ambiguous 23 of llluminatus)
more than coincidence.
a half years (half the

is

The dwarf stars that exude from the finger-tips in a

Kirlian picture echo Newtons law that everything in the
universe is inter-connected. The red gases on Jupiter flare
out of the heart chakra, Venusian force-fields can be found
squatting in a Kirlian capacitor plate and be activated and
nabbed on film when a sympathetic object is placed there.
The hairs on your head are antennae tuned to pick up
Martian gossip.

These flare-patterns indicate the tuning of the human

gyroscope to the galactic wave-field. Anima est sol et tuna.

The bio-plasmic body

is

cosmically linked

luminescent litmus paper that records changes in the

environment, seasons, tides, noise levels and all the
resonances that flesh is heir to. There are changes in the
bio-plasmic body (as well as in brain waves, enzyme levels
and blood volume) when telepathic messages are coming
through, detectable via polygraphs, plethysysmographs and
a Kirlian camera. Your ears may go red when someone is
talking about you behind your back, but your aura will also
show a large dent, or if theyre being kind about you, will
reveal a rich red burgeoning corona.

A later experiment, known as the 'phantom leaf

effect, made by S. Andrade in Sao Paolo, Brazil, in 1972,
added to the mystery: Andrade took an electro-photograph
of a leaf showing a glowing aura. He then chopped off the
end of the leaf. Using a Tesla coil to create the appropriate
forcefield, he rephotographed it shortly afterwards. The
aura of the missing section is clearly visible, luminously
echoing the original shape of the unsevered leaf.
For a long time there was great difficulty in repeating
this experiment, which led to much scepticism, but in
recent months the experiment has been repeated successfully
some hundreds of times by Thelma Moss, Hubacher and
others in the U.S., and the arboreal phoenix lives again,
scientifically reinforcing the earlier observations of
spiritualists that everything has an "energy bqdy or an
"etheric double which remains unaffected by slash-happy
scientists.

The missing" energy body of the leaf section is

obviously not the electrical state of the organism, since that
part of the field has been lopped off, but something much
higher up the spectrum: some other more finely tuned

Interconnectedness is inescapable, though variable.

Two close friends working together will generate a brighter
cascade from their finger-tips photographed together on the
same capacitor plate than two strangers. The auras of two
lovers' fingertips photographed side by side will merge in a
purple haze. Two people projecting antagonism towards
each other will exude negative, sinuous, viscous patterns,
like Portuguese Men-Of-War, that avoid each other as much
as possible. A small drop of blood from a pregnant woman
has, on one occasion, revealed the image of a spectral

The aura is the skin-brain at work. It is quite

unrelated to galvanic skin response, i.e. its not sweat. Three
American scientists who at one point knocked on the head
all the finances for Kirlian research in the States, by writing
an article in Nature in which they alleged that the Kirlian
was caused merely by moisture, were later forced to
recant. A seed has next to no moisture at all, and yet most
seeds give off an extremely vibrant coronal discharge.

effect

Accompanying

this article

you

will

find an electro-photo-

graph that took in 1979 of two marijuana seeds, that side

by side as they arranged themselves, made me think of Don
Juan, winking (Sutton Seeds Ltd., please note. Electrophotography could prove an excellent method of
seed-sorting and discovering which seeds will grow and
which will not). (Copyright and left).
I

The auric force-envelop around the body registers

electromagnetic waves from everywhere in the spectrum.
Patterns of radio-activity can be felt with the finger-tips,
and a photograph of their aura will reflect it; perhaps a skill
left over from earlier stages of development, i.e. in worms,
where receptors for light, sound and smell are dispersed all
over the body surface. Christian worms make the following
supplication on the first Sunday in Advent: Put upon us
the armour of light, "(Collects, Book of Common Prayer").
Events that radiate the fact that theyre going to
happen before they do, register themselves in the auric
field. If this seems nonsense, then consider particles that
can go backwards in time, now quite conventional.
Consider the neutrino that can penetrate a lead wall, fifty
light years thick. Dr. Podshibyakin discovered that in the
presence of close-to-the-ground magnetic storms, the
electric potential of the skin rises. Some people get forebodings of these invisible whirlwinds twenty-four hours
before the storm happens. Others get them three or four
days before the storm shows up on physical instruments.
It may be that the aura is composed of a swirling mass of
tingling telepathons: phychic bees performing exploratory
dances that encompass, the globe in the twinkling of an eye
in order to inform their sluggish queen, the body, which
was fool enough perhaps to fall from spirit into matter, of
dangers or delights ahead. It may be that the streets are
riddled with thousands of auric sandwich-men displaying
the whole history of the future for those who have eyes
to see.

There are of course some creatures which are all aura,

and who will only pose for you if youve got a Kirlian glint
in your eye. Angels, ghosts, dybbuks, goblins, sprites, devas,
ondines, sylphs and fays, common to all cultures, and

maybe

to other planets (Michael Marten, of the Martian

Liberation Front (Fight for the right to land) believes
that Martians are composed entirely of electro-magnetic
fields and the metallic rubbish that the Americans are
dumping there seriously interferes with their orgasms).

scrupulously marked, and the positives were later, in the

nineteen forties blown up to the size of a house in order to
try and detect double exposures, fake shading, and the
existence of models, but to no avail.

The pictures show some very dramatic images of

whod crept through a crack in the void to
model for the two Cottingley girls. My initial reaction to
them was suspicion since the beings are all in contemporary
earth-spirits

twenties costume, but then a nexus of theosophist braincells whispered: Well, thats how they materialised at that
time in order to be recognised. I retorted: But what if it

was
a

to

happen now? Punk-rock fairies would be carrying it

wouldnt it? The theosophist was not to be
had been conditioned by a

bit far,

outdone and commented that

prissy Victorian attitude to the Secret

Commonwealth.

"Fairies, the voice said, "are simply angels that fell from
heaven but didnt fall as far as hell. Any entity ,any entity
can contribute to these strange fields.

Recently, according to John Chesterman, co-author

of "Worlds Within Worlds, the Cottingley photographs were
subjected to a form of analysis known as Computer
Enhancement, first perpetrated by the Jet Propulsion

Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and wires were

apparently found through this method, stretching up from
the creatures, to the top of the photographs. John
Nicholson, author, bookseller, and propagator of The
Fanatic commented: Ah, but fairies are for children to see.
That's their nature. A machine would quite naturally only
see wires. That's it's nature.

Be that as it may, Ive found that the Kirlian camera

which have been using over the last year is a mechanistic
Maria Callas, wired to the no-osphere, the far-gone-osphere
and the far-gone-outosphere, and that theres precious little
accounting which firmamental pressure-group its wired to
when you plug it in Presman has noted that electro-magnetic
fields facilitate informational exchange between living
organisms. have found that my field and the field that
the Kirlian camera is creating, have a relationship: if you're
in a bad mood, or trying to show off the process to
someone, or doing a picture under any kind of negative
pressure, it won't work. If youre in a good mood it will.
(Just think if guns, cars, the telephone, & nuclear weapons
were that responsive, bleeps Mister Natural).
I

A dramatic example of the machines feelings

occurred when photographed the key to the room where
keep it; and compared it with the key to my shed where
keep a broken washing-machine and assorted rubbish. The
first had a sort of irradiated halo, the second a couple of
confused blurs spilling out of it in a desultory fashion.
I

Conan Doyle believed that these auric creatures were

and took up their cause when
girls from the village of Cottingley in Yorkshire
claimed to have captured pictures of them on their uncles
Brownie camera. The case caused a global sensation after
the First War, and allegations of fraud abounded. But the
plates of subsequent pictures that the girls took were
a sister stream in evolution,

two

Thought, feelings, illness and death all show up on

the auric map. No Kirlian picture has for certain yet been
taken of a human being dying, but doubtless it will.
Photographs of a leaf dying show long striations of energy
streaming off it into Never-Never-Land. They vary in length
with the Sensitivity of the equipment, in other words given
superlatively sensitive equipment they may never end. The
energy that is released by the artificial transformation
known as death is still extant, and the body-lightning rodeo
can perhaps be reconstituted in its original shape, should
anyone be so attached to it, given the right force-field on
the other side of the fence.

A
in this

psychic needs no machine to detect other life-forms

atmosphere. It was a prime Celtic belief amongst

others that the air was crammed with spiritual entities, and
that heaven was celestially swirling right here, and behind
you and in you and around you and up you. You snorted-in
boggarts, and elves, and devas and demons (over-exposed
Kirlians) at every breath. Christianity, on the other hand,

showed heaven, or the

spiritual and auric aether, miles and

miles away, in order to make the earth seem second best,
in order that the powers that shouldn't be could do

and

with

it

what they

willed.

LSD

has in fact recently been the subject of atomic

and reveals extremely high energy levels.
more electrons in its outer orbits than in any
more again, it seems, than in that more
human being, which deals itself to itself
little thought of the consequences.

analysis as well,

There are

far

other drug, and far

primitive drug the

The auric effusions made manifest on the Kirlian

camera show the lust of every scrap of matter for spirituality,

constantly with

for another state of play, and indeed, at the sub-atomic

level matter is spirit. Things placed in front of a Kirlian
camera display their fundamental image of themselves,
dancing an aery fandango on an incorporeal plane. It shows
that any contact with 'objects' - picking up a pebble on
the beach for example, moving its position, chucking it into

The Orange Sunshine tab looks fairly merry being an

Orange Sunshine tab (and glowed Cheese in five-D when
threw the Kirlian switches on it). also managed to take an

the sea,

is

a seious business, let alone the

planets been fucked

up and

way

half this

aura turned into an aertex

Things can be fucked up, but
when did you last sec a thing fuck itself up of its own
volition? Not an attack on you, gentle reader, but where are
shirt

by

its

insensitive meddlers.

you standing or sitting now, what on, and why? Why aren't
you an inch to the left or an inch to the right? Await the

electro-photograph of some of the Richard Kemp acid that

made the Holy Grail boil over at Glastonbury Fayre and
Windsor Free Festival, and helped to arouse the anarcho-

communalist giant Albion from

his slumbers. Later, this

acid, some of the purest strain ever made, was to feature in
a bureaucratic and meretricious bring-down known as

Operation

Julie. I photographed a tab of this 'Julie' acid

shortly after the spiteful scenario, involving prison
1 70 years, had taken place

sentences totally

Auric Dictionary.

The word thing is one of the most mysterious and

indefinable words in the language, and seems to have more
different uses than any other noun. "The supposition,
stated Bishop Berkeley, that things are distinct from ideas
takes away all real truth. One of the earliest semantic
snares that this strange blanket port-man teau, hold-all,
- a thing - got tangled up in was to become a

concept

synonym

for the word assembly or meeting; "lets go to

that thing on Tuesday night. The earliest religions
worshipped imbued matter, a thing, a clashing of energy
vectors; later the word came to mean them, the people
drawn to the thing, the assembly, an anthropomorphic,
self-centred and personalised corruption of the original
meaning. But despite human chauvinism many things have
far

stronger auras than

human

beings.

The Kirlian picture of the tab

distinct lecling of a persecuted Will

determined to keep

Compare this Kirlian photograph of some Orange

Sunshine acid (which curiously reveals itself as living up to
its name) with the aura of a human finger-tip. The Sunshine
tab is a solar anenome, the finger-tip (which happens to
belong to Uri Geller, from whom a little more might have
been expected) is a somewhat cobwebby splodge.

itself intact

struct

me

as having the

O' the Wisp, but one

and

despite ignorant

philistine opposition.

These Kirlian Rorschachs show that an inanimate

thing has emanations, capable of a plethora of emotional,
psychological, ecological, spiritual and perhaps even
political inicrpretations; either correct or incorrect, but
certainly challenging heuristic skills. So youve caught me

on film, what have you caught? Gods sons are things.

Samuel Madden, Boulters Monument, 1712.

Dave Lawton of Bristol, who built the Kirlian Camera

which now use (or which uses me) took this photograph
of a 50p piece. From comparisons with electro-photographs
I

&

I-

<t>
OPERA TION JULIE ACID
Looking like a

Will

the Wisp on the run and Surrounded by Pharisaic phagogytes

II

of raw metal (which all boogie fairly boisterously on the

pneumatoscopic plane), it is clear that this abused thing was

much more fulfilled being a lump of cupro-nickel rather

than being squinched into the meaningless and tiresome
shape cynically forced upon this now wretched piece of
equipment (presumably thus designed so that you can get
it out of someones hand with a spanner) and exuding an
aura like a congealed bat-fart.
Mr. Lawton

is

now

incidentally building a Tesla coil

with which he proposes to fire 500,000 volts of plasmoid

spark-mush through his body, swathing himself with
Elektras aeon juice. The whole human aura is visible in
such a field. If he turns himself into a Smiths Crisp during
the process, it might be possible to put a tracer on his aura
and see where it goes, but hopefully he will not.
It may be however that there is an unexpected Kirlian
photograph taken at the moment of a mans death, nearly
two thousand years ago, namely the Shroud of Turin. Its
quite possible that the Shroud became emulsified by the
gelatinous unguents, balms and spices with which Christs
body was covered. The material of the cloth, soaking up
scraps of silver nitrate, acetic acid, metol, potassium

bromide,

become

unguents and

in Christs sweat, would have

and the coronal discharge at the
death was emblazoned on the cloth.

in the

photo-sensitive,

moment of his

body. Light squirts out,

in stark

powerful beams, from The

very places indicated as meridians of energy

traditional

in

the

acupuncture charts.

The laying on of hands is clearly a benevolent auric

transmission. The V sign, or the first and last fingers of one
hand splayed towards you as practised on the Continent,

mono in'fica,

the mono impudica, the mono cornuta,

and the demonic mudras, are an attempt to earth you and
paralyse you with negative currents.
the

At the dawn of experience people worshipped things

rather than each other (or hypostasised versions of each
other). They worshipped them with a curious reverence,
rather than raping them with a destructive fetishism. People
currently pick on their elders and betters, namely things,
like a fractious child molesting and tormenting a peaceful
adult in order to get a reaction. Now perhaps things can be
seen in a new light.

The science however is still in its infancy, and sadly

shortly after its birth sciolist soul-spivs and hucksters
in on it with the assiduity of an end-of-the-pier
palmist. They sell over-priced Kirlian cameras and woo the
unwary with extremely dubious character studies based on
an electro-photograph. At the Kirlian stand at the recent

moved

Festival of Mind and Body at Olympia thousands of people

queued to have their finger-tips photographed, and then
were lured into shelling out a considerable sum for what
sounded to an eaves-dropper a shallow, hazardous, and
ridiculously generalised analysis. It recalls the early days of
electro-encephalography. remember reading an early paper
on the subject which claimed that air-line pilots and
psychopaths showed similar EEGs. Doubtless the man who
wrote it had a large holding in P. & O. lines.
I

The left-hand path will surely lead to Kirlian beach

photographers, Bio-plasmic Photo-booths in Woolworths,
and Prana Photomatons in Benares Butlins, and the
right-hand path (or vice versa) to auric bugging: if thoughts
show up on the auric field then the thought police wont
be too long in trying to stitch it all up, so that everyone will
be too scared to have any aura at all, and well be back to
square one. The low-minded sub-reality putsch. "What my
net wont catch simply ain't fish. The spark of life you say?
I cant see it.Turn the light on.

The middle path shows the way

When the stone was rolled away from the dark room,
the first Kirlian pic had been developed, stopped and fixed.
The modern science of electro-photography has borne
out instinctive human experience in several ways. The
phrase all lit up, a common phrase for intoxication, is an
interesting example: electro-photographs of the finger-tip
of an intoxicated subject show great heavy splurges of light,
clumsily leaking out, an indication that large quantities of
energy are being burnt up very quickly, and they are
exaggeratedly illuminated.

The ancient Chinese meridians in acupuncture, the

of the energy circuits, show up
dramatically in Kirlian pictures of the relevant parts of the
irrigating junctions

across the

Rainbow

Our energy is continuous and immortal. Self-absorption

short-circuits your field and makes an ugly snap. Auric
altruism refreshes the planisphere and returns your electrons
to you at compound interest. See yourself coming in bigger
than you were when you went out. Clean your spark-plugs,
Nosferatu Nerdniks. Ye that are heavy-laden, rip off your
clothes, rise up and bathe the world in light. The Recording
Angels got a Polaroid. Wheres the Kirliar. clapper boy?
Akashic flashers, unsheath your auric fronds and let it all
hang out so far you gotta pump air to it. Click.Click.
Take

infinity!

Go with the Glow and Renew the Glowing Glue that

Cosmic superglue. Let your light
men
Sickness is pulling the plugs out on
If you keep your aura to yourself you wont have,
you rip off something or someone elses the farce
you. Crown King Thing. The aura bomb has
been detonated. Our energy is continuous and immortal.
Fiat lux in the unfucked flux.
sticks everything together.

so shine before
it all.

one.

If

will desert

Charles Partington

HOEKY

NIKI

MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS

450 pirate tapes

found in search
A SEARCH

of two Manchesrecord shops revealed

some 450 bootleg and pirate
recordings, a High Court
Judge heard.
Mr Justice For authorised
solicitors for 40 recording

Brllton

trading
Charles Partington

ter

companies,
groups
In

and

artists

'

as

or selling any bootleg or

or
recordings.

pirate

session,

Thev

d
also

hav

The'

search
Street,

Manchester,
premises

frig

destroying or
such recordings

and two
ro other
c
o be run

people who
or to wT i they supplied,
|

allegedly

IllllSii

CUTTING THE IGNITION, Jeremy Cornelius allowed

the old blue Packard to crunch slowly across the gravel of
the derelict schoolyard until it came to rest under the

windows of the main hall.

was 4.32 pm. And already growing dark. Snow was

shattered
It

fall on the city.

Jeremy hated the cold, short winter days. He hated
Manchester. However the North had certain obvious

beginning to

Phonograph Institute
had concentrated their investigations on London and the
Midlands, leaving Jeremy free to pursue his bootleg record
business unhindered. But things were hotting up now.
Several times in the last few weeks Jeremy had been
convinced that he was being followed.
Imagination? Perhaps. But even so, it was probably
time to move on. There was enough paranoia in life without
the added tension of being shadowed by private detectives.
attractions. Until recently the British

Jeremy reached over, grasping the bulky cardboard

box lying across the rear seat with both hands. It was heavy
and awkward. He grunted audibly with the strain of lifting
it,

cursing the fact that both of the ancient Packards rear

doors refused to open.

He dragged the box out of the car onto the gravel

surface of the school-yard, blinking as snowflakes settled
on

his eyelids.

He

listened intently for a

moment, studying the

area

of derelict buildings beyond.

Nothing.
Picking up the box, Jeremy staggered towards Princess
Road. Overhead, rush-hour traffic was beginning to build

up on the southbound expressway.

Although most of Moss Side was already in the process
of redevelopment, the row of deteriorating Edwardian
houses standing opposite the abandoned school had so far

row contained five houses and two

windows had been boarded
earlier. Though squatters were currently
no lights showed.
Jeremy Cornelius lurched up the steps to No. 73 and
pushed the door open with the toe of his imitation snakeskin
boot. Dragging the box into the hall, he rested, allowing his
eyes time to grow accustomed to the gloom.
It seemed even colder inside the house than it had
been outside. Perhaps the dampness had something to do
with it. A faint smell of incense hung on the still air.
Floorboards creaked overhead and the sound of conversation

The preamble to 'Jean Genie began to echo eerily

around the flat. Jeremy settled down with a joint of
Moroccan.

came from

then a vague

escaped demolition. The

shops. All of the ground floor

over several months

inhabiting the premises,

room.
Jeremy opened the door to his own room and pulled
the box inside. Only after satisfying himself that the curtains
were still drawn did he switch the light on. There were gaps
between the boards covering the windows. And Jeremy
Jills

wasnt taking chances.

Miss Brunners antelope-hide suitcase peered out at
him from under the bed. He breathed a sigh of relief. One

day soon the

suitcase

Snow crystals were melting in her bedraggled red hair.

She was wearinga Daniel Hecter sashed shirt-dress in clinging
challis. Her face was flushed and her expression was one of
perplexed tension.
Miss Brunner entered the

behind her.

flat,

leaving the

cypher, Jeremy wondered? She

door open

made

straight

for the suitcase.

Whats wrong? he asked.

"You

look awful. Even

thrill of apprehension was moving in his bowels.

had a telephone call from Captain Maxwell.
She began throwing things into the open suitcase.
Suddenly Jeremy wanted to pee.
"Jerrys crypt has been broken into, she went on.
Somethings happened to his body. Theyre sending a

"Ive

helicopter for

me.

When?
She glanced worriedly at her watch. "Ive got to be at
by 6.1 5. Captain Maxwells arranged special

would be gone. She had indicated

that the Manchester office had already considered releasing

Platt Fields

her for other duties.

clearance for the helicopter to land near the boating lake.

The rooms

preyious tenant, before he joined the

and bought himself a house in Birmingham,

had painted the room black, suspending miniature planets
from the ceiling. Where star formations once glittered in
now space peeled and mould attacked the
Civil Service

acrylic Dayglo,

universe.
If

facets of Jeremy's

magpie involvements with the

many

arts.

Inspirational curiosity instead of a formal classical education

had resulted in unsatisfactory affairs with most schools of

from the Primitives through Tachism to Action
painting

Painting.

There had been successes of course. But never

sufficiently rewarding in terms of financial gain to support
lifestyle. Hence the reliance on
bootleg albums, and in desperate periods, on pushing homegrown bush down at the Students Union.
Even now his guitar, his only permanent fix, needed
new pick-ups. The axe was an exact copy of Jimi Hendrix's
Gibson Flying V, equipped with Fender Rock n Roll light
guage strings, Vox wah-wah pedals and a Dallas Arbiter
Fuzz Face. Mostly he used a battered twenty -watt practice
amp, not daring to jack in the 200 watt Orange amps and
Sun speakers stacked under faded Indian carpets against the

even Jeremys modest

body?

"Whats happened
Miss Brunner shook her head. "Captain Maxwell
wouldnt say over the phone.
Jeremy traced his pale lips with a beautifully shaped
."
fingernail. "Is he still .... still
Miss Brunner snapped the suitcase shut, her fingers
resting over the clasps. "Still what? Her eyes glittered.
Still dead?
Jeremy Cornelius nodded. Yes.
"Perhaps you overestimate your cousins powers,
.

Jeremy dear. He isnt the Christ, you know.

Jeremy stared at her. I think we both know that."
Miss Brunner walked stiffly towards the door.
"Wait for me! Impulsively, he pulled the plug on
the record player and grabbed his sheepskin coat. Im
coming with you.
You havent been invited." Miss Brunner noted coldly.
"Jerry and are family. Captain Maxwell will understand.
I

"Maxwell never understood anything. She closed the

door behind them.

of the bed-sitter.

and severed the

The battered
cardboard collapsed and dozens of brilliant album sleeves
Jeremy opened a can of Stella

lager

cord holding the record box together.

slid

audience.
to Jerrys

the decor had seen better days, the actual contents

of the room were elaborately bizarre, reflecting the

far wall

Jeremy was beginning to feel frightened. Forgotten

now, David Bowie insouciently whispered the lyrics of
Rock n Roll Suicide' into the microphone after
announcing his retirement to a stunned and disbelieving

across the floor.

Sitting

on

his haunches,

picked up one of the albums.

Hill

the disturbed nature of his private thoughts. Their location

he drained the can and

He smiled

in sleet and darkness, south of

on the Salisbury plain.
Jeremy stumbled out of the helicopter, disoriented
by the pitching and yawing of the aircrafts flight and by

The Sikorsky landed

Milk

appreciatively. This

was one of thirty copies of Led Zeppelin's Earls Court

arguably the best Zeppelin bootleg available, discounting
the almost legendary 'Blueberry Hill. 'Earls Court' and the
Pink Floyds Tour 74' had striking full colour in-concert
,

though Jeremy suspected that the Floyd cover was

in fact a collage. The rest of the bootlegs were familiar
standards, all of them heavy metal rock groups in constant
demand by freaks and university students: Zappa, Deep
sleeves,

didnt register until he emerged from under the slowing

rotor-vanes. Behind

and

in

front of them the landscape was

dark, barren.

Where are we? Jeremy shouted above the engine's

dying whine. "This isnt Harrow. Jerrys buried in Harrow!"
Jerry was burled in Harrow. Miss Brunners face
flashed alternatively from darkness to light in the revolving
red and green beam of the aircrafts landing lights. Hes up
there now, in

my

house.

Mars, recorded live at the

Purple, Yes, The Dead, Dylan and a dozen or so others.

Jeremy chose another new album, Bowies 'Spiders From
Hammersmith Odeon. Slipping
the record out of its sleeve, he placed it on the Bang and

She ran on ahead as lights came on in the porch. Behind

the frosted glass doors, a portly figure could be seen waving
for them to come in out of the cold.

Olufsen deck.

the drive,

Though most of the snow had been cleared away from

by the time Jeremy reached the house one of his

boots was letting in water. The helicopter

its base, Jeremy
They would be staying the night, then.
"Ah, Miss Brunner. So glad you could come. And
Jeremy too!
Captain Maxwell was dressed in his usual tweeds with
the brown leather patches. He was still putting on weight.
He smelled of cheap cigar smoke, and his old Etonian tie
was badly rumpled.
Smiling, he ushered them through into the lounge.
"Weve cleaned up most of the mess, he explained, a
little apologetically, "though no doubt the furniture will
have to be rearranged. There was some doubt about the
original lay-out of the room."
Miss Brunners gaze was coldly critical The carpet?"
"Had to throw it out 'm afraid. Nothing else we could
plastic snakeskin

of Edinburgh had drained away, leaving him agitated and

roared overhead. Probably returning to

looking considerably older.

surmised.

The woman was young and pretty, perhaps in her midA laboratory technician from Easton, Connecticut,
Deborah G. Dimmitt had an astonishing alphabet of degree
her name.
Jeremy wasn't exactly sure what they were looking
for in the electronic debris littering the cellar floor, but he
realised that for Sir Martin to be there it had to be
twenties.

letters after

important.
Miss Brunner's face went white when she saw the
extent of the damage. She was trembling visibly.

Cornelius? she asked. "Hes still here?

Sir Martin nodded. "Yes. Their motive wasnt the
body. His eyes twitched from too long without

theft of his

sleep

and

his breath

do."

obvious reason to

There was a body covered by a white sheet lying behind

the horse-hair sofa. Jeremy could see a pair of nylon-clad,
varicose-veined legs sticking out. The corpse was wearing
red court shoes.
Agnes? Miss Brunner gasped.
Captain Maxwell sighed. "Afraid so. Shot through the
heart. Died instantly of course. Even a Karate black belt
is no defence against a .45.
"Whos Agnes? J eremy asked curiously, straining to see

cryo-crypt

her face.

"She was Miss Brunners house-maid, Captain Maxwell

answered. "And Jerrys bodyguard.
Bodyguards the right word for it, Miss Brunner
complained, pouring herself a straight gin. "Towards the
end she wouldn't let anyone else near him. Embarrassing."
She handed Jeremy his usual. I never did like her, you
know, she admitted.
Captain Maxwell coughed nervously. "Come now;
always found her extremely efficient.
I

Miss Brunner giggled.

trying to give

To

him a

relief

a corpse? Captain

Maxwell said

disbelievingly.

Jerry has that effect on people. Miss Brunner

admitted.

Jeremy Cornelius was confused. But what's happened

here?" He demanded. After all, youve had us flown down
from Manchester. You might at least take the trouble to

Perhaps

only appears that way because we're not

it

possession of all the facts," Captain Maxwell suggested

in full

calmly. "Whoever was responsible for

where

Jerrys

body had been moved

we

Yes,

downstairs."

The cellars were extensive and appeared far too modern

The way into them lay

through a four-inch thick

steel

door.

small but efficient

been devastated by some kind of explosion.

A man and a woman were working intently in the
confusion. Until Captain Maxwell called them by name
they didn't even notice their visitors.
The man was an eminent doctor, one of the finest
neurologists in the country: Sir Martin Dixon. Now he
looked tired. The tactful charm he had displayed during his
many television appearances prior to the death of the Duke

all

it

the angles."

"Wheres Jerrys body? Miss Brunner demanded.

want to see

We

"I

it.

haven't disturbed the corpse.

here, in the

It's still

cryo-crypt." Sir Martin answered. However,

pretty sight.

They

tried to destroy

it

it's not a
with napalm before

leaving.

With difficulty, he raised the cover of

a scarred

and

blackened oblong box measuring seven feet by four feet.

The cover had once been transparent plastic. The dials and
input terminals clustered on a console mounted on the rim
had been shattered by several blows with a heavy instrument.
Inside the cryo-crypt was a charred and twisted figure
that might once have been human.
Jeremy took one look then turned away and threw
up.

lift took them quickly down to the third level. They

stepped out into a large laboratory that had apparently

exactly

said angrily.

rather thought so ourselves. Maxwell

any idea who might have done

for the eighteenth century house.

knew

and how to reach

Out of the question! Miss Brunner

self-motivation.

come

all this

to,

without triggering the sealing mechanisms. Unless, he

added, "Agnes talked before she died.

agreed. "Still, one has to cover

explain what this

is all about.
Captain Maxwell looked somewhat disapprovingly at
Jeremy. I was under the impression you were here by
He put an ape-like arm across Miss
Brunners shoulders and whispered something in her ear.
Miss Brunner shook her head. There might be
difficulties, Maxwell. They are cousins, you know. Anyway
perhaps he has a right to know.
Captain Maxwell shrugged, runninga hand through his
thinning hair. Very well then. suppose you'd both better

"Then what were they after? Miss Brunner asked.

all this damage? It's senseless."

"And why

caught her once, downstairs,

massage.

was sour. "That seemed the most

And can't believe it was the

us, too.

itself they were after. All the major power-blocks

have been familiar with the basic principle for over a decade."

Miss Brunner's expression was enigmatic.

Sir Martin replaced the cover. "Has the department
this?" he asked.
Captain Maxwell sighed. "He had many enemies, even
amongst those he counted as friends. Its not unreasonable
to assume a hatred so intense they'd seek a final vengeance
by mutilating his corpse.
"Perhaps we can find out who did it, if not the reason
why. Miss Brunner stated in an emotionless voice.
Captain Maxwell stared at her, his face vacant with

astonishment.

How?

I had a video-scanner installed, linked between here

in the garret. During the first months just
.
thought that perhaps he might
Recover? Miss Dimmitt suggested helpfully.
Yes. Miss Brunner gave her a slight smile. I didnt
inform you at the time, Maxwell. It seemed so ridiculous.
Maxwell patted her arm understanding^. And you
think the intruders will show up on the video-tape?"
Miss Brunner nodded. "How do you think found
out about Agnes?" she said.
Images blurred rapidly across the tiny viewing screen
as Miss Brunner rewound the large tape reels.

and

my office

after his death,

two seconds," she

"So any movement that may occur will jump
one exposure to the next. The system was

It records a single frame every

explained.

alarmingly from

designed to provide a record of any change

in Jerry's

condition. In the three years hes been dead he's never

moved once.

five

How long do the reels last? Jeremy asked.

At one exposure every two seconds a full reel lasts
weeks." She watched the numbers clicking rapidly

across the face of the dial; then stopped the machine.

This

No 'm
I

afraid

Jeremy pulled the plug on the video-screen. His eyes

were the colour of ash. Captain Maxwell turned to object,
then saw the expression distorting his face.
"Listen," Jeremy said, switching the telephone into
the office amplifier. Slightly distorted, Sir Martin Dixon's

voice echoed into the garret.

the place.

is

Notice anything different? she asked.

Captain Maxwell studied the screen.

What am supposed to be looking for?

Look! Miss Brunner demanded cxaspcratcdly.
Look at the right hand. Theyve cut his little finger off!
not.

Wheres Sir Martin? Captain Maxwell inquired as

they grouped themselves around the video-screen.
"He'll be up in a minute, Miss Dimmitt answered.
"Theres something he wanted to check on. He said to carry on.
The diminutive screen showed a full length view of

Maxwell. Miss Brunner. Jerry Cornelius

is

alive!

There's a detectable heartbeat, faint but steadying

all

the

And his eyes are open. There was a brief pause, the line
hummed. "It seems impossible, thats why waited before

time.

telling

you.

had to be

sure. Jerry Cornelius

is

alive again."

the coffin-shaped cryo-crypt. Beneath the reflective

transparent cover, Jerry Cornelius beautiful white face

up

stared

at them.

He was naked. Apart from the four

.30:30 entry holes in his narrow chest, there was nothing to

show he wasnt
At the

just sleeping.

sight

of Jerrys naked body, Jeremy

felt

the

familiar anguish in his loins. Cursing he closed his eyes,

aware of the flush spreading across all his cheeks. Even in

death, Jerry Cornelius had the power to disturb. Thankfully
Jeremy realised that no one else had noticed his
embarrassment, their attention was focussed on the video-

Jeremy was standing motionless in the garden. It was

still several minutes before daybreak. He watched the
horizon, noticing that huge snow-clouds were gathering.
The sound of boots crunching through the frozen
snow disturbed the silence. It was Miss Brunner and Captain
Maxwell. Their breath hung on the still air.
For Gods sake, Jeremy; this is insane. You must be
half-frozen. Please come back inside the house. Miss
Brunner clung tightly to Maxwell's arm as they struggled
through a snow drift.

Jeremy held
"There! Captain Maxwell stabbed a pudgy index
finger at the screen as a
plastic

else
five

shadow

cover of the cryo-crypt.

fell

It

movements jerking disparately from one frame to the next.

What are they doing? Captain Maxwell asked
What are they

doing?

Mounted

down

around

in

the ceiling of the

cellar,

the video-camera

at two-second-intervals as the figures clustered

jerry's

suddenly vulnerable body.

The cover had been

Just for an instant, as

if

lifted.

finally

in

the

nails digging into

Jeremys arm. Thats Muir. Hogarth Muir, the biochemist!

Im sure of it. He turned, jowls quivering with excitement,

towards Miss Dimmitt. "Get Sir Martin up here

immediately. Hell want to see this for himself.
the

As suddenly as they had appeared on the video-screen,

vanished, leaving the camera staring down at the

men

body of Jerry Cornelius.

Then a wave of coruscating

fire

streamed over the

pale corpse, burning and withering the flesh.

billowed up.
I just

The screen

Smoke

flickered once, then blanked out.

don't understand

it,

Captain Maxwell

muttered. What were they doing to Jerrys body down

there? And why try to destroy it afterwards? Doesnt make

me. He walked restlessly around the tiny garret,

banging his head on one of the beams of the sloping ceiling.
Could you show us the whole sequence again, Miss
sense to

Brunner?" he asked.

A telephone rang on Miss Brunners desk. Jeremy

picked the receiver up. It was Sir Martin on the internal line
from the cellar. Jeremy listened intently.
Of course, Captain Maxwell." Miss Brunner answered.
She stopped the automatic rewind, ran the tape forward
several feet and held the frame on a view of Jerry Cornelius
just before the napalm hit his body.

ice

late. he observed.

is

Captain Maxwell knocked the snow off his boots with

Fog delayed the take-off.

the tip of his Irish walking stick.

It

could be hours yet.

Why not

be sensible and do as Miss

Brunner suggests?
1 prefer to wait here." Jeremy said quietly, glancing
back at the house.
Miss Brunner stamped her foot angrily. Her Wellington

boot stuck
pull

it

in

the

snow and she

nearly

fell

over trying to

out.

"Youre

Hands grasped the corpse.

aware of the camera

one of the men looked up.

Captain Maxwell stiffened, his

ceiling,

The

looked colder than the frozen river-bed.

The helicopter

anxiously, straining his bull-head forward.

stared

his head in a negative posture.

glittering in his eyes

briefly across the

vanished, and nothing

happened for thirty or forty frames. Then suddenly

people were on screen around the cryo-crypt, their

to be afraid of

just being childish,

Jeremy. Theres nothing

you know.

Im not afraid. Jeremy insisted.

"Then come inside.

"No.
The light was strengthening perceptibly now. Jeremy
sighed, aware that both

No doubt

of his boots were soaking wet.

would curl upwards when they

the toes

eventually dried out.

"What did they want his finger for? Jeremy asked

Brunner and Captain Maxwell
were determined not to return to the house without him.
We can only assume that Hogarth Muir was interested
finally, realising that Miss

in Jerry Cornelius' genetic coding." Maxwell began beating

his arms together to keep warm. "Before he resigned from
the ministry, Muir was the head of a unit doing research
into the viability of clonal reproduction. Of course, the
department was financed, and to a large extent directed, by
our American cousins; but Muir was the acting head of the
British section. Or rather he was, until both the Pentagon
and General Electric withdrew their joint funding of the

operation."

"Oh," Jeremy wished the helicopter would come.

Why?"
"Not

sure really.

Not my area you understand.

It

seems the Americans had mastered the clonal regeneration

process, but had run into tissue degeneration problems.
Thats why they called us in; hoped the British, or rather
Hogarth Muir, could come up with the answer.

'

"After the Americans cancelled the project, Muir

approached the government with what was a rather
improbable proposition in these inflationary times. He was
convinced that, given sufficient time and financial backing,
his team could come up with an effective tissue stabilizer.
Naturally, the application was turned down. He promptly
resigned, had an extremely rude letter delivered to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and vanished. That was about
six months ago, since then we've heard nothing of him until

A change had come over

both of style and persona.

euphemism,

his cousin

Jerry Cornelius

now it was dyed

velvet

black and tied at the back of his neck in a

bow.

He smiled, one hand resting insolently on his hips.

He looked exactly like P.J. Proby.
Surprised,) eremy? Jerry asked, a malicious little
grin on his pale face. Didn't they tell you d made a
complete recovery?" He pulled the silk blouse out of the
cummerbund to expose his chest. No bullet holes; no
I

be ready to sing again soon.

"Sing? Jeremy echoed doubtfully.

scars.

Ill

I intend to recut 'Niki Hoekyand 'Rockin

Pneumonia. The Liberty set-up always insisted on a

thirty-piece orchestra instead of a heavy Creole band.

His face worked in a rictic snarl and his eyes glazed.
"Hounter, Huntor, Haut-chant.

He mouthed

painfully.

Jeremy stirred uneasily at these words. Jerry's

knowledge of Voudoun was sketchy at best, yet oddly

don 'I ignore

communication.
Jerry 's in trouble. He needs help. He keeps asking for
you. Don't let him down. 'Phone Maxwell if you need
Please

this

transport.

Brunner.

There were

five similar telegrams awaiting him,

quarto-size manilla envelope from the B.P.I.: a

accusing him of trafficking

in illegal

The summons

as

didnt

come

and a

an hour ago.

If

he did respond to

Miss Brunners requests, he could be staying at Milk

Hill for

time, with any luck. If so, hed need his guitar.

Jeremy had just begun tuning in the bass string when
door opened. Captain Maxwell stuck his head around
and peered cautiously into the room.
Alone?
Jeremy nodded.
"Brought someone to see you.
He entered the flat. Miss Brunner followed. Leaning
heavily on her arm was Jerry Cornelius.
Jeremy stared open-mouthed at his cousin, hardly
believing what he saw, wanting to speak but not knowing
what to say. There had been developments since they last
the

the door

Jeremy ran towards him, but Miss Brunner intervened.

"Leave him, Jeremy. Captain Maxwell knows what to
do."

Maxwell was

at Jerrys side.

Snapping open the

catches of a small briefcase, he withdrew a disposable

hypodermic syringe and a small

plastic bottle containing

fifteen milli-litres of Pentathol SL/a.

wasnt a criminal offence in Britain.

Brunner. The twenty-eighth of February four days ago.

Perhaps he ought to go back to Milk Hill? It would certainly
do no harm to delay matters with the B.P.I.
What kind of trouble was Jerry in, Jeremy found
himself wondering. The telegrams were so vague. He was
both intrigued and suspicious. Hed definitely make his
mind up, tomorrow.
He unwrapped a new set of Fender Rock 'n' Roll
strings and three Acee pick-ups bought at Virgin Records

some

Jerry Cornelius began to shiver violently, sweat

soaked out of his pores and his limbs locked rigid.

Cambe, kembe, he screamed, "they drain me;
these Gros-bon Anges drain me! He collapsed across the
bed. His neck muscles seemed about to snap under the

summons

He stared around the flat, wondering what to do. It

seemed unwise for him to remain in Manchester. Obviously,
he needed time to think.
He studied the date on the last telegram from Miss

in Piccadilly less than

his

pronunciation had been flawless.

records and cassettes.

a complete surprise. He'd

heard the bust was coming off while unloading albums in

Glasgow and Edinburgh. There was now no hope of avoiding
a confrontation with the B.P.I., Jeremy knew that. But at
least it would only be a civil action. Unlike the States,
selling bootlegs

bound at his waist by a

metallic cloth cummerbund. He still wore his hair long but

this affair.

That's right, Jeremy. Hogarth Muir intends producing

on Jerry's DN A pattern. Who
knows, he might even succeed." Her face was vicious in the
dawn light. "Just think, you can have a Jerry Cornelius of
your very own. No need to be jealous then.
Jeremy slapped her face very hard, then began to
walk towards a copse of elms and birch leading down to the
Winchester Road.
What do you think you're doing? Captain Maxwell
roared after him.
Fuck your helicopter, Im hitching back to
Manchester. Jeremy shouted as he vanished among the trees.

an overworked

in tight velvet pants,

puff-sleeved white silk blouse was

Jeremy looked ill. The pieces were fitting together

now; and the picture they made was anything but reassuring.
Miss Brunner grasped him by the shoulders.
tissue-stable clones based

Jerry Cornelius: a change

To employ

looked a different person,

was dressed

white knee-length socks and black patent school-shoes.

Dark brown contact lenses disguised his alabaster eyes.

Does he? Jeremy asked mockingly. "Is Captain

Maxwell also a Houngan, among his many other
accomplishments?
Miss Brunner stared at him. A what? she asked.
A houngan, Jeremy repeated. "A voodoo priest.
Jerry Cornelius was sleeping quietly. Jeremy, Maxwell

and Miss Brunner were talking in whispers on the other side

of the room. Captain Maxwell was smoking a cigar.
"Physically, Jerry

no

made

a perfect recovery. Theres

of lasting tissue or bone damage; even his little

is beginning to grow back. Yet this delusion that hes
P.J. Proby is reaching psychopathic proportions."
Jeremy looked across at the figure lying on the bed.
"Arc you suggesting that hes schizophrenic?
Thats a laugh, coming from you, Jeremy! MissBrunner hissed.
Captain Maxwell censored any further remarks of
that nature with a reproving glance. "Sir Martin and Dr
sign

finger

Strank supervised his convalescence;

opinion that Jerry

is

showing

all

its their considered

the symptoms of a classic

identity crisis."

"And the Creole-Voudoun patois: how does Sir

Martin explain that?
Jerry could have come across it in a book
somewhere

"Th-- *ords, yes, but not their correct pronunciation.

yet

"Difficult that, Jerry admitted. Im not sure myself

moved from

him to head for France; then circle.

Bloody civilians! the second officer muttered,

hearing strange voices.

Tell

side to side with a paranoid urgency, as though

A gutteral moan escaping from
between clenched teeth, Jerry Cornelius staggered towards

A look of insanity distorted

climbing back into the cockpit.

the cockpit.

"But what exactly is the difficulty? Captain Maxwell

had to shout a little to make himself heard over the noise of
the 2,000hp Nimbus engine. Either you know, or you
dont know where Hogarth Muir is.
They were all drinking Miss Brunners coffee. Maxwell
was obviously worried. It seemed that Jerry was being even

the pilot and the second officer struggled to keep Jerry

his face.

Paralysed with fear, Captain Maxwell looked

more petulant than

usual.

Jerry Cornelius

window

was

staring

moodily out of the

at the cloud formations. For a reason

to himself, he was

known only

dressed like P.J. Proby. His blonde

still

"I

when

didnt say
I

Recoiling off the shuddering fuselage walls, Miss

Brunner clawed her way into the cockpit, Jerry's needle
in her right hand. She waved it menacingly.
Leave him alone! She pressed the trigger. Metal
around the pilots feet. Let him fly the

gun

plates shredded
aircraft!

knew where Muir is, Jerry objected,

if we were close enough

could locate him

suffered another identity attack.

Identity attack? Jeremy realised that confusion

was

as

critical levels.

roots were showing.

sulking. I said

on

away from the controls. The Westland lost altitude quickly,

rolling and spinning around its own axis, the rotor blades
screaming in protest as the stresses imposed on them reached

"Hes mad! the second officer protested. We'll

crash!

"He knows what hes doing. She triggered the needle

gun again. There was no further argument.

a family trait.

"The clones Hogarth Muir generated from

tissue, Miss

Jerrys

Brunner explained confidentially as she poured

Jeremy a second cup of coffee, apparently threaten Jerrys

Id: his psyche if you like. Hes always feared insanity,
perhaps more than anything else. Now hes under some
form of Gestalt psychic attack.
Are you saying that Jerrys clones have psi powers?
Jeremy questioned. Telepathy?
Miss Brunner shrugged.
Captain Maxwell made a noise and went forward to

confer with the pilot.

Jeremy studied

Jerry Cornelius should have been flying at least partly

helicopters instrument systems. Instead, he gazed

on the

fixedly ahead through the regular sweeps of thescreenwipers,

his delicate

thousand micrograms.

Worried, Jeremy studied the vibrating steel fuselage

of the helicopter, the muzzled machine-guns, the racks of
weapons and 40-mm grenades.
"These conditions are bad for dropping acid, you
know. Jerrys sure to enter a psychotic state."

Hes not taken

Brunner chided him.

it

to experience euphoria. Miss

I can tell. Mende is over there, somewhere." He

pointed towards the east with his left hand.
The second officer looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Then we're flying towards the Aveyron Massif!

"You sound worried. Miss Brunner observed.
The second officer nodded, never taking his eyes off
the instrument display panels. "I am. Difficult terrain to fly
over. Especially at this altitude.

No one

rise

up

down

Miss Brunners expression

next identity attack upon him. Every other attempt to

much time

With acid-expanded sensory reception, Jerry believes

he can locate the clones."

But the risk to his unprotected psyche

Jerrys aware of the risks involved.
But he was dead, out of it all. Why did he come
back? Jeremy asked. "For what purpose?
"Pure ego. Miss Brunner explained. His exclusiveness
was, is unique. He couldnt bear to have that threatened.
As they crossed the French coast, Jerry Cornelius
struggled to-his feet, his eyes electric. His movements were
erratic, the result of intense visual misperceptions. His head

still

to four

dropping.

hundred metres now,

Some of

the peaks ahead

to five thousand above the plateau floor. If

hasnt located the target area within the next

fifteen minutes,

We
it,

reflected Jerrys internal torment, "to amplify the clones

locate Hogarth Muir has failed, and there isnt

laughed.

The cloud base is down

the pilot said, and

of us

swings as his senses ascended the psychedelic

curve towards epileap.

He wanted to take

left.

of the

far as

Mr Cornelius

was rocking back and forward on the

deck of the Westland, shaking and shivering, undergoing
Jerry Cornelius

mood

twist-grip

them.

South of St Fleur, heading towards the Aubracs, as

Jerry Cornelius turned, his face a mask. Piss off, he

Apparently the Lord of the Flies was not amused.
Jerrys eyelids began trembling.
Miss Brunner checked her watch.

The acid? Jeremy inquired.

rapid

on the

Where are we now? Captain Maxwell asked the

down at the grey landscape rolling below

pilot, peering

he murmered. The word made him

"Mmmm. Two

lightly

horrors seething inside him.

laugh. Psi-clones.

said.

hands resting

control column. Only his eyes gave any indication of the

his cousins profile silhouetted against

the plexi-glass canopy.

Psi-clones,

Its against regulations, you know.

The pilot was occupying the observers seat. He wasnt
happy with the arrangement.
Visibility was down to six hundred metres and
deteriorating rapidly. It was snowing steadily.

ll

have to

until conditions

insist that

we put the helicopter

improve.

"Thats out of the question! Miss Brunner snapped.

have to go on." She looked at Jerry in consternation.

She was obviously very tired.

Im sorry Miss Brunner, the pilot answered, "but
Im responsible for this aircraft and for the safety of its
passengers and crew. Fifteen minutes more, then we go

down.
Without warning, J erry Cornelius brought the Westland
around in a tight diving turn, gunning the'throttle at the
last moment to send the helicopter clattering low over the
surface of a half-frozen lake. A black stone tower surrounded
by ancient cypresses loomed up out of the murk of snow

and low cloud.

Hogarth Muir! Jerry screamed above the roar of
the two thousand horse-power Nimbus engine. His
expression was hideous, as, recklessly, he abandoned the
landing of the helicopter to the pilot and pushed his way
1

first. The weapons were to be used as a last resort."

Captain Maxwell was as determined as Miss Brunner. You'll
give the word. dont want you adding to

towards the weapon racks.

The Westland landed by the edge of the lake, not far

Muir

from the remains of a disused railway line. The downwash

from its rotors scattered snow and ice-shards in all directions.
Before the engine whine had died, Jerry had opened
the exit-hatch and leapt out into the snowstorm. He had
strapped on one of the flame-throwers. In each hand he
carried a loaded Smith and Wesson revolver.
"Come back here! Captain Maxwell shouted through
the hatch as Jerry ran across the railway tracks and under
the first of the cypress trees. Come back here! But if the
New Aquarian Prophet heard the summons, he made no sign.
Miss Brunner grabbed a Belgian F.N. and two

stay here until

and tried to follow Jerry. Captain

Maxwell blocked the hatch with his bulk.
What do you think youre doing? Maxwells jowls
quivered with rage. His eyes were pressed into thin slits.
"I 'm going to help J erry. Now get out of the way,
Maxwell. She still had Jerrys needle gun. It's muzzle was

cartridge clip-belts

pointing directly at Captain Maxwell's heart.

The sounds of distant sporadic gunfire

The

pilot interrupted

sounds

like rifle fire,

him. That's not Mr Cornelius,

probably

Ml 6s. Theres

at least

three of them.
longer. Move away from
or youre dead. There was no
doubting that she meant it.
Of course," Maxwell blustered, "if Jerrys under
attack we must do all we can to aid him. After all, that's

Miss Brunner could wait

no

that door, Maxwell

what were here for, isnt it?

Slamming a magazine onto the rifle, Miss Brunner
pushed past him through the hatch and began running up

snow covered incline towards the tower. Captain

Maxwell began distributing weapons.
"Someone will have to stay behind and guard the

the

helicopter, the pilot insisted, girding himself with an extra

revolver.

came echoing

cramped cabin.
Listen! Maxwell said hoarsely. "Jerrys causing
enough damage out there as it is. The idea was to talk to
into the Westland's

the carnage."
Sir. It

Jeremy, beginning to feel distinctly nervous now,

immediately volunteered. Unfortunately, Captain Maxwell
wouldnt hear of it.
"Very decent of you, Jeremy. But perhaps it might

be wiser to leave the second officer here. He

if

were

is

Airforce

you know. Regulations, my boy. He smiled. "Now

ready, perhaps Jerry and Miss Brunner could use

personel

some

all

assistance.

Before Jeremy could grasp the situation, they were

outside, stumbling through knee-high snowdrifts towards

the distant trees. Even in the

dim

light their figures

stood

out sharply against the snow. Jeremy was desperately aware

made excellent targets.

They came across the first body not twenty yards
Some distance beyond, a second man lay
He had been shot in the throat with a thirty-eight
calibre bullet. He had lost a great deal of blood. Captain
Maxwell finished him off.
They broke through the last of the trees several
minutes later, following confused tracks in the snow that
led across extensive lawns up to the tower.
The snow was coming down thicker than ever, and
the light was almost gone. They were all breathing heavily.
that they

body lying in *'ie shadows at his feet. It was a woman.

Her face had been torn away by a high-velocity shell.
Jeremy almost fainted.

Its all right, Jeremy; thats not Miss Brunner. Its

one of Muir's assistants. Now get going,see what's happening
in there.

Several yards along the corridor, an aluminium door

hung open on shattered hinges. Cautiously, Jeremy peered
inside.

Jerry Cornelius was standing in the center of a large

into the trees.

circular

dying.

a limp but

Captain Maxwells face was purple. Jeremy's boots and

socks were soaked right through again.

The tower looked about sixteenth century, though

sections had apparently undergone

much

later renovations.

Narrow iron-barred windows and embrasures were spaced

around the tower. Its tiled facade was Grotesque
in the grand tradition. Facing them an arched, open doorway
irregularly

gave entrance.

Go on,"

Captain Maxwell urged from behind a bed

of Rhododendrons. "Well cover you, Jeremy."

What?
Have a look
"Oh."

inside.

down

into the snow.

A figure appeared

in

Exhausted and frightened, her maternal

inhuman, Jerry.

instincts

were

"Inhuman?" Jerry Cornelius mocked. Liquid death

dripped from the nozzle onto the tiled floor.
Hogarth Muir stood next to Miss Brunner.
emaciation.

tall

and

thin,

almost to the point of

It

And his mustache and goatee beard accentuated

the malevolent lines of his face. Ironic intelligence tempered

was Jerry

As Jerry turned to greet

his cousin,

Muir made a

desperate attempt to grasp a Luger pistol kicked under the

For Shiva's sake,

will

you people hurry up?

think

theyve got Miss Brunner.

By the time Jeremy had picked himself off the ground

and brushed most of the snow away, Captain Maxwell and
the helicopter pilot had reached the tower entrance. As
they ran inside a barrage of shots rang out. There was an
aeonising scream, a seething roar, and the sound of several
minor explosions. A dense cloud of acrid smoke billowed
out through the arched doorway.
Half-blinded by the fumes, worried sick about Miss
Brunner, Jeremy entered the lower.
He was standing in a huge banqueting hall. Above his
head a many-winged Griffon clawed its way across the
domed ceiling. Fake medieval beams decorated the lincrusta
walls. Three huge diesel generators filled most of the floor
space. Jerry had burned them out with his flame-thrower.
Shouts and the sounds of footsteps echoed eerily up
a stone stairwell set in the floor at the end of the hall.
Jeremy remembered to check his revolver. He clicked the
safety catch off. As he walked towards the stairwell, his

ruined boots
darkness.

against the transparent walls of their life-support-

modules.

surfacing. Its so

the fear in his eyes.

the doorway.

Cornelius.

The

fists

"There has to be another way! Miss Brunner was staring

almost hypnotised at the nozzle of the flame-thrower.

He was

Jeremy had covered half the distance when a burst of

automatic rifle fire from inside the tower sent him diving
face

room. He was holding the flame-thrower nozzle in

menacing attitude. His face was a grinning white

The room was full of highly sophisticated electronic

and biomedical equipment, all linked to seven intensivecare-modules spaced around the circular wall. In each of the
modules was a baby.
The babies looked very weak and delicate; almost
embryonic. But Jeremy knew that these infants had never
experienced a female womb. All seven were wailing in
helpless, strident anger. All seven were staring at Jerry
Cornelius and the flame-thrower, beating tiny clenched

left

damp

steps took

tracks across the ancient stones.

him down into an

Somewhere ahead of him,

irritating flashing

fluorescent tubes were

flickering madly.

legs

of a cabinet containing an electro-encephalograph.

Jerry turned, dropping to one knee, and triggered the

flame-thrower. Hands off, Muir! he screamed, laughing.

Two jets

of coruscating fire blazed across the laboratory.

There was a smell of burning flesh.
Hogarth Muir moaned in horror. Cornelius had burned
both his hands away to the wrists. A less than subtle

vengeance.
Sickened, Jeremy wondered
Jerry

motioned for them

all

Jerry hadnt

to step out into the

corridor. Hogarth Muir was surprised,

his

own

execution.

that he was

still

Youre

It

showed

he too had expected

a great deal for his character

rational.

letting

me live?

he said, stunned.

nodded impatiently, You'll be

one of Maxwells special-high-security units

Jerry Cornelius

detained

in

until you're

needed.

"Until hes needed? Miss Brunner seemed to be

regaining a measure of self-control.

Jerry Cornelius pointed the nozzle of

the flame-thrower at the screaming babies. I approve in
"All this

was a little
premature.
drowned by repeated jets of fire

principle. Its just that he

His laughter was

At the bottom, Jeremy ran along a narrow curving

why

simply killed him.

roaring from the flame-thrower

corridor to where Captain Maxwell was standing slumped

up against the corridor

wall.

Jeremy could

features in the erratic lighting.

He looked

just discern his

ill.

His breathing

was laboured. A dark stain oozed through his shirt.

"Im all right. Just a flesh wound think." He coughed
and blood trickled past his lips.
I

leremy stepped back, aghast, and almost tripped over

Charles Partington.

41

die as

bus dives into lake

I am an artist;
and should be exempt from shit

EJ.PROBY

1966