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Prometheus Music
Leslie Fish's Filksongs
The Virtual Filksing (MP3s galore)
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Leslie Fish on Music...
I play 12-string guitar, 6-string guitar,
some electric guitar, recorder and penny-whistle (not terribly well), autoharp, hand-drum,
and I can fake it on electric bass. Keyboards? Hah! Just well enough to pick out
a tune for transcribing. Plus my voice, of course. When I got my first guitar at
16 I'd already been into folk music, singing it anyway, for years; I spent about an
hour a day playing/practicing with it, and would have done more if my parents hadn't
yelled at me to quit making that godawful racket and do my homework. I think Mom
was particularly pissed off because she'd tried for years to teach me piano (and
Classical lyric-soprano singing -- even though my voice was obviously alto) because
she wanted me to befome a proper Classic-music pianist/singer and maybe wind up at
the Met -- and none of it took. Instead I was busy "wasting time with that awful
cowboy music". Now that I'm successful enough to make my living at That Wretched
Stuff, she never asks me anything about music. *Snicker* I use [a verse-long instrumental
break] for dramatic purposes: to prepare the audience emotionally for the last (summarizing
or punch-line) verse, or to heighten tension before the resolution. Naturally, the
"break" can't be allowed to bore the audience, so I play my damndest then.
...Which songs am I proudest of? Well, there
are a lot of them, but I'd have to say that "Hope Eyrie" heads the list.
It's gone the farthest and influenced the most people. Oh, the tales I could tell
about that one -- how it came to be written, how it became the anthem of the fandom/pro-space
movement, how it was translated into Polish, smuggled into Poland and became the
underground anthem of Solidarnosc -- hell, ask me later; Other songs I'm proud of:
"Freedom Road", "They Were Having a Sale at the Gun-Store", "The
Cripples' Shield-Wall", "White Man's Rain Chant (Lord of Thunders)"
--they're all good solid songs, and they all have workable magic.
Song I'm least proud of: "Banned From Argo",
no contest! I wrote it to order, to fill in a four-minute shortage on the master
tape when we were recording SOLAR SAILORS, and hoo- boy, do I ever regret it! The
damned piece of fluff became damn-near as popular as "Hope Eyrie". It's
inspired a horde of filk-variations (which the Creaseys are trying to collect for
a book, gods help them), got asked for at every con for years until I got so heartily
sick of it that I refused to sing it again, and now it's inspiring spin-offs too.
Arrrgh! Which tapes am I proudest of? Hard to say. The Kipling tapes have some of
my best tunes (most of them I'd been singing and refining for years before they were
recorded), CHICKASAW MOUNTAIN has some very good songs with reliable magic effect,
IT'S SISTER JENNY'S TURN TO THROW THE BOMB was most fun to make (being a reunion
with my old Chicago band), and FIRESTORM has some of my best and most powerful songs
on it (though I really don't like the way it was produced), the various Misty Lackey
song-tapes have some gems on them, and SOLAR SAILORS was my first big-break record.
My current filk-book has over 100 songs in it
(I haven't counted), and there's my Kipling collection (at least another 50), my
Pagan songs (at least 25 there) all the Misty Lackey poems I put tunes to that I
don't have copies of (another 25 or so), plus some purely folkie-political stuff
I have in other books at home. Say at least 200, maybe 300 -- and I'm constantly
adding to it, so I have no way to tell.
Favorite filksong that I didn't write: "Worms
of the Earth", by a band called Clam Chowder, popular around the SCA for the
past couple of years. I heard it at Pennsic 19 and it blew me away. (Well, wait until
I've been to another filksing, and that may change.) WOTE is one beautifully- written
song, set purely "in period", and with a moral that I can't help agreeing
with. Hmm, I can't say whether it's a filksong or actually a folksong; the border
between the two is exceedingly fuzzy.
Leslie Fish on Cat Breeding...
...About breeding cats for intelligence: it
started off as a college Psychology project, and just sort of grew from there. A
neighbor had a female "domestic shorthair" (i.e."alley") cat
who got herself merrily knocked up by a purebred Siamese tom, and now had kittens
to give away. I noticedthat two black kittens in the litter (fortunately a male and
a female) had unusually long and deep skulls. I adopted the kittens, raised them,
played games with them to stimulate their intelligence, tested them (found nice high
kitty IQs, too, which got me a good grade for my Psy. term project), and finally
bred them. After that I kept on testing, selecting and breeding subsequent generations
of kittens for 1) intelligence, 2) disease-resistance, 3) elegant body-types -- in
that order of priority. Well, it worked; I now have a line of "purebred"
cats with reliably high intelligence, pretty good disease-resistance, and handsome
looks. The experiment showed me some things about the nature of intelligence which
the official psychologists still haven't figured out, much to my amusement.
First, increased skull and brain size/capacity
doesn't automatically guarantee intelligence; they just set up favorable conditions
for it. Second, increased intelligence requires a high-protein diet and lots of sensory
stimulation from birth (pet, cuddle and play with kittens -- or any mammalian babies
-- from the day they're born, and they turn out smart. Simple!). Third: intelligence
is not made up of any one thing (such as memory or neural connections or "problem-solving
capacity"), but is a complex of several things -- and a critter can have a large
amount of one, and a small amount of another.
My cats, for instance, are on average about as
smart as a six-year-old human child -- except for language. They don't have symbolism
-- the idea that one thing can STAND FOR another; their "language" is all
analog, made up of sounds, gestures, poses, smells, etc., all of which have direct
meanings, not symbolic ones. "Purrrr", of course, shows happiness (or a
desperate attempt to flatter a human out of whapping the cat for some feline crime).
"Hisssss" shows anger, and "Screeeech" shows more. "Waaaooowaaaaooo",
so often heard on back fences, shows horniness. I've noticed some 20 or so feline
"words" (other researchers, according to a documentary I saw on NOVA) have
identified 10 more. Add to that gestures (with ears, tail, paws or whiskers), poses
and scents, and you'll find that cats have an analog but flexible vocabulary of up
to a hundred "words". Problem is, as I've found out, they use their intelligence
for their own furry-feline purposes, which are not neccessarily ours. My particular
bloodline of critters have proved marvellously adept at stealing people-food...
So, onward. I have about five adult cats right
now, and the gods know how many kittens (one of my breeding-queens was pregnant when
I left; she could have had the litter by now). As to why filkers like cats, I suppose
it's because cats have such famous independent personalities; therefore, people who
likewise are "wierd" enough to develop a taste for something as intellectual
and esoteric as (think about it) science-fiction folk-music would feel a kinship
with the critters. Hobbies? Hmm. Since I have a tendency to turn my hobbies into
real-time work, that's hard to say. I read sci-fi, of course (also fantasy, horror,
occasional mysteries, adventure stuff and a lot of the independent comic-books).
On music, besides filk, I like folk, rock, and the more folk/rock-oriented C&W.
On rare occasions, given my not-so-copious spare time, I do tapestry and crocheting.
I used to paint, draw and sculpt, but wasn't good enough at it to proceed seriously
without more art-classes -- and besides, the muses of music, poetry and fiction-writing
gobbled up my time and energy.
Leslie Fish on Hobbies...
Movies? Heh-heh! I like thrillers and sci-fi
and adventure tales; ROAD WARRIOR is my all-time favorite. (Hmm, and thereby hangs
the tale of how I broke into professional writing. If I don't remember to get around
to it in this missive, remind me and I'll tell you later.)
Sports? Okay, I'm wierd. I like horsebackriding
(pretty good at it, if I say so myself -- more stories there), canoeing, archery,
hunting and target-shooting -- but only to DO, not to watch. To me, the whole point
of a sport is to enjoy the physical effort, skill and excitement of doing it. I honestly
can't see the fun of watching a gang of uniformed pros running around doing all the
action while you just sit on a bench (or TV chair) and watch. I used to be a Trekker
-- actually got my start in writing by doing stories and poems for Trek-zines (and
of course, I made myself infamous there, too; I was the third writer to ever tackle
the K/S theme -- Diane Marchant was first, with the story "A Fragment Out of
Time", and Gerry Downes followed with "Alternatives", but my stories
"Shelter" and "Poses" really shoved the theme into mainstream
Trek-fandom, for which I got the expected flak) -- but I sort of lost interest when
NEXT GENERATION came along; it's just too pusey, Yuppie-ish, and bloodless for my
tastes. Hmm, I don't know if this counts as a hobby, but I like good SF/ST/adventure
porno. Ghu knows, I've written enough X-rated Trek stuff to have a taste for that!
In fact, early in my writing career, I once took a pot-boiler job writing short novels
for a porn-publisher. Frankly, it was boring as hell and didn't pay very well, and
after the one-year/eleven- manuscript contract was up, I quit the business before
it could make me bored to death with either writing or sex.
Leslie Fish on Odd Jobs...
"Odd jobs"? Heh-heh! Hell yes, I've
had some VERY odd jobs! Back in my last days in college, I needed supplemental jobs
to keep my nose above water. I took whatever jobs showed up in that primarily-college
town (Ann Arbor; I went to the University of Michigan), and some of them were odd
indeed. I worked as a keypuncher for a Fortran class (remember that antique?), and
sneaked revolutionary comments into the interstices -- started off some fine discussions
and arguments, too. I did the usual clerking and waitressing too, but couldn't stand
to keep at it for long. I did industrial day-labor too (which inspired me both to
join the Wobblies and to write "Minnie the Freak" -- remind me to tell
you about that one some time). Having developed a taste for bizarre work, I kept
at it after I finished college and moved to Chicago. I worked for awhile as yard-clerk
("cinder kicker") for the B&O Railroad. I was under-editor for the
Wobblies' newspaper, THE INDUSTRIAL WORKER, for a year. I also put together the IWW
union band, The Dehorn Crew, which managed to get a little work around Chicago, but
which is mostly famous for doing an album of my StarTrek songs called "Folksongs
For Folks Who Ain't Even Been Yet", which sold at SF cons well enough to inspire
another album called "Solar Sailors", which brought me tothe attention
of Off Centaur Publications, who invited me to come move out to California and work
for them as their house musician. Wierd enough yet?
Anyway, the last time I really needed cash (one
of my cats had a huge vet-bill; paying off that, plus my rent and utilities, left
nothing for little things like food, so I needed a job quick) I recalled what a fannish
girlfriend had told me. She worked for an S&M club as a professional dominatrix,
and upon viewing my usual con-costume of black leathers, she commented that if I
ever needed money I could always come to work with her as a dominatrix. So, what
the hell, I called her up and said: "You're on. How do I start?" Well,
she took me to the club and showed me the ropes (and the whips, and the chains,)
and explained how this game worked: 90% fantasy, 10% health-precautions. Well, I
made enough bucks to keep me fed for a couple months, while the rest of my income
went to paying bills, and I got an interesting look at the inside of the S&M
scene of the San Francisco area. However, I was never really good at it: just didn't
have a talent for it, couldn't pick up on the psychology, had real trouble not laughing
at some of the things the clients wanted. But what the hell, it paid the bills and
inspired "Dominatrix' Song" -- which I sang for the other girls at the
club, who liked it so well that they've made it their unofficial anthem, part of
their act and their advertizing in the, hmm, trade-papers. *Sigh* Such is fame!
Leslie Fish on Childhood...
I was born and raised in dull, ruthlessly
respectable suburbs in dull, ruthlessly respectable New Jersey, to dull, ruthlessly
respectable parents whose religion was Class Climbing and whose passion was Making
Money. Outlet for relief: Mom had been a professional musician before Dad married
her, and they liked showing off her Classy ability whenever possible -- which meant
that Mom had to keep in practice; as a result, I grew up with music constant in my
ears. I remember that I could sing before I could talk. Mom often told me that I
could whistle on pitch when I was 8 months old. I had an old record-player (and later
a radio) in my room from the day I was born, which I soon learned to operate, so
when Mom wasn't singing or playing I could always have records or the radio on while
I played with toys or did homework. It was a real punishment to have the music turned
off -- but then, I could always sing to myself. I was always a night-owl, and bedtime
always came too early, so when I had to go to bed and keep quiet in the dark I'd
tell myself stories -- and after awhile start singing the words until I fell asleep.
I sang myself whole rambling essays of rambling thoughts, which I liked much better
than lullabyes. One problem with this, which I didn't realize until years later,
is that the part of the brain which holds music also deals with mathematics. In my
case, that whole department was ordained, before I was born, to be taken up with
music. That means that I had no talent or understanding whatever for mathematics.
Since the schools at that time (and most of them at present, from what I hear) taught
the sciences math-first, I was doomed to fail embarassingly in any science course
I ever took. I actually loved science -- the facts and relationships fascinated me
-- but when it came to required mathematics, I was dead in the water. Anything that
I could physically SEE I could understand and enjoy, but anything that required shoving
abstract numbers around lost me completely. The only math class I ever did anywhere
near well in was geometry, because I could see the relationships the numbers were
supposed to explain. I actually liked chemistry, but flunked it and had to take it
over (in a summer-school course, where I passed with a C+ only by swearing to the
professor -- on a copy of THE HANDBOOK OF CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS -- that I was a continuing
Literature major and would never, ever, go into any science field professionally).
I learned how to read when I was three. Mom had
a habit of reading me bedtime stories, and I soon noted that the same stories from
the same books always used the exact same words -- very different from the stories
Pop told me, which he made up himself. (They tried all sorts of tricks to make me
go to sleep on time; none of them worked, but I learned from all of them.) I would
sneak closer and peek into the book to see what it was that showed Mom the same exact
words, and I noticed lines of regular, repeating squiggles that were obviously The
Secret Code. I asked Mom about the squiggles, and she was delighted to show me what
letters were and how they worked. It didn't hurt that she taught me the Alphabet
Song, along with giving me a set of alphabet building-blocks.
Once I'd memorized the letters and their sounds,
she showed me how to put the sounds together to make whole words -- and after that,
there was no holding me back. I remember to this day the first book I ever read by
myself; it was a "Bucky Bug" comic-book, aimed at the 10- year-old crowd,
and it featured a really neat fight between the harmless good-guy bugs of Bugtown
and a bunch of nasty big bad-guy cockroaches. Of course I liked the fight scenes;
all little kids are bloodthirsty, little though parents- teachers-preachers and other
kid-wranglers want to admit it, because all kids know that they're an undersized
slave-class and they damn-well resent it. I remember that the tactical trick which
turned the tide for Bugtown (invented by the smallest and youngest -- yay! -- of
the good guys) was sticking mirrors out in front of the invading cockroaches so that
they attacked their own reflections and knocked themselves silly. Moral: "Victory
goes not to the strong, but mainly to the skilled." One of the bad-guy bugs
commented, after knocking dents in his head on the mirror, "These guys kick
like mules." Everything else I could get, fitting letters into words and seeing
the words clarify the story -- but that word "mules" had me stumped. All
I could make out of it was "mull-less", which didn't make any sense.
So, being a trusting little kid at the time,
I went and asked Mom what that word was. Mom was delighted -- at first -- to see
that I was learning to read (and only three years old, too! What a nice achievement
for her to brag to the neighbors about!), and she explained about "mules"
and the variations on the letter "U". Then she looked at the rest of the
comic book. Ooh, ick: vi-o-lence! Sleaze! Trash! Low-class! She confiscated the comic-book
and threw it away. That was when I learned that adults could be hypocrites, thieves
and tyrants, more interested in ruling kids than in teaching kids to be competent
-- and to be free, I had to keep secrets from the grown-ups. Anarchism 101. After
that I got in the habit of reading-on-the-sneak, with a flashlight under bed-covers,
in the library when nobody was looking, at friends' houses. I learned to hide those
"trashy" books that the grownups didn't approve of, especially comic-books,
in lots of different stashes.
Leslie Fish on First SF encounters...
I can't recall exactly when I first encountered
sci-fi, except that I had to have been less than six; that was when we got our first
TV set (also the year that I finally figured out about time and dates, and understood
what year it was), and I discovered Captain Video -- and later Science Fiction Theatre
and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Rocky Starr, Space Ranger. I know I was already
fascinated with rocket-ships and outer space when Pop took me to see DESTINATION
MOON at the movies. Whee! Special Effects -- in color! The parents were tolerant
of that taste, since some clever child-shrink had told them that science-fiction
got kids interested in themselves on the kid-psych tests to be woefully bad. The
parents would even let me read comic-books (I remember recognizing the drawing-style
of Wally Wood) if they were sci-fi. I read all the "juvenile" sci-fi books
in the school and town libraries, and then started sneaking into the adult section
to get grown-up sci-fi. The librarians sometimes caught me, but when I insisted that
I was interested only in the "science books" -- nothing as dangerous as
sex or politics -- they didn't complain too hard.
But onward: I made my escape via academics --
in other words, my grades and PSATs were good enough to get me an early acceptance
from the U. of Michigan (I'd been hoping for UCLA, but Michigan was far enough from
home to keep the parents from visiting regularly, or expecting me to come back every
weekend). My first day there, after the parents had left, I strolled around the campus
getting acclimatized when I saw a poster announcing a pro-Civil Rights demonstration
that night. I took my guitar and my folkmusic books and showed up.
It was quiet, peaceable, and dead-boring as picket-lines
go, and between songs I had plenty of time to talk to the picket-captain. He was
a grad-student named Tom Hayden, and he was one of the founders of this pro-civil-rights/anti-war
group called Students for a Democratic Society, and how would I like to come see
what they were up to? "Where do I sign up?", said I.
Needless to add, I spent the next few years running
around doing pro-civil-rights and anti-war stuff when I wasn't studying, doing folkmusic
or trying to earn money. It was a very interesting time, to say the least. Too many
stories there to begin going into now. Sci-fi had to wait on the sidelines until
the war was over. On the day that Nixon announced he was officially pulling out of
Vietnam, I was over at Vets' House (a crash- pad, war-data-library, office and community-center
run by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, whom I worked for as a psych. counsellor
-- long story). The whole gang of us watched, dead silent, while the TV newsmen analyzed
Nixon's words and showed the first troops returning, and it finally sank in that
the war was over. Nobody cheered; we all just gave a huge sigh of relief and exhaustion.
Some of the vets wandered off to get beer, others sprawled around the living- room
talking half-heartedly about getting the VA to give decent help to returning vets.
I wandered down to campus to see how the no-longer-draftables were taking it. At
the student center I found a huge crowd of kids huddled around the TV.
They weren't watching any news- analysis of the
war's end, no; they were watching reruns of a famous sci-fi show that I'd heard about
but had never before had time to watch. The show was STAR TREK, and I walked in on
the beginning of "Mark of Gideon" -- a good episode if not a great one,
about the horrors of overpopulation. Well, I was hooked. Ye gods, a TV drama-series
that dared to talk about real issues -- such as overpopulation, war, censorship,
sex -- all the things that so-called serious TV wouldn't dare touch, and it was science-fiction
yet! (Bear in mind that at that time TV was self-censored to death -- had been since
its inception -- and nobody, except Ed Murrow with his splendid news-exposes, discussed
real and relevant social issues. TREK was a ground-breaker in more ways than one.)
Well, I proceeded to catch up on all the episodes
I'd missed. Then I started collecting the James Blish short-story versions of the
episodes. Then I started writing ST filksongs (the first was "The Thousandth
Man", as I recall), went hunting for ST conventions, and encountered fanzines.
Then I got into collecting zines, and writing poems and stories and letters-of-comment
for fanzines. Then I started on my sprawling epic "The Weight" and became
a serious Big-Name Fan. And of course I wrote more filksongs. I sang them at room-parties
at conventions and got a reputation as a Big- Name sci-fi folksinger (I didn't encounter
the word "filk" until 1977). I even got my band, The DeHorn Crew, into
singing some of them. Then a fan I met at a con offered to produce a record (all
of 500 copies) of my filksongs, and FOLKSONGS FOR FOLKS WHO AIN'T EVEN BEEN YET was
launched.
The year after that another fan, named Steve
Reubart, offered to do a better job (and 2000 copies worth), so SOLAR SAILORS got
pressed. I advertized among the fanzines, and sold the records at cons, and eventually
somebody with serious publishing intentions noticed. In 1982 I got a contact from
Off Centaur Publications, the first people to seriously make a full-time business
out of recording and selling filk; seems they were putting together a new kind of
convention (Bayfilk) and wanted to invite me as their next guest of honor. Well,
I'd never been to a purely-filk con, or to California, so naturally I went. (I wrote
"No High Ground" while waiting in the airport -- one of the last times
I rode a plane -- sang it at my opening concert and had an instant hit on my hands.)
It was great fun, and San Francisco was the most physically beautiful city I'd ever
seen, and the weather was utterly gorgeous (especially compared to Chicago; ask me
about the Bad Winter of '79 sometime -- that's when 15 feet of snow fell on the city
between New Year's and April Fool's, and it didn't all melt off until Mayday. Tales
I could tell...). So, after the con was over (and after I'd spent a few days recording
some of my Kipling songs for what later became COLD IRON), when Teri Lee asked me:
"Why don't you move out here and work for us?" all I said was: "Wait
'til I pack."
So, (after a few delays, such as attending the
first Trek-fan writers' con in Britain, selling or rail-shipping everything I owned,
formally breaking up the band, booting out a dead-beat roommate, and getting my car
fixed up for the trip) I took off cross-country for the San Francisco Bay. That trip
was an epic in itself, since it was a cold and snowy February, and there was a truckers'
strike going hot and heavy -- complete with State Trooper raids and shooting rifles
at scab trucks, and the convoy of fans I linked up with had vehicles in worse shape
than mine, and a lot of the highways were closed off with snow (don't ever get snowbound
in Amarillo; the city has absolutely no facilities for it).
Leslie Fish on Off Centaur & C.J. Cherryh...
But anyway, I finally got to the Bay Area
and moved in with Off Centaur and friends, and became a professional filker. Well,
the next couple years were pretty idyllic. California food and rent prices hadn't
skyrocketted then, so what I made off my now-deceased Pop's trust-fund plus my royalties
from the OCP tapes kept me quite comfortably. I worked steadily as OCP's house musician,
putting in vocal and instrumental back-ups and leads on damn-near every tape they
put out. That's also where I got into the habit of writing songs on demand in a half-hour
or less; Teri would hand me a clutch of poems -- usually Misty Lackey's -- and ask
me to put tunes on them before dinner. Hey, no problem. Writing whole songs on demand
was tougher, and took longer, but I managed.
Then I'd sing said songs at the next con we went
to, mention that listeners could pick them up on tape such- and-such down in the
dealers' room, and come home with enough sales to keep me in steady royalties. Nice
work. Using the skills I'd picked up while writing for ST fanzines (seeing how much
feedback you get per story, I'd say there's no better working school for writers),
I started sending out my fiction in search of a buyer. I sold just one story ("Amateurs",
a little realistic horror piece, to the short-lived NIGHT CRY, for the unimpressive
sum of $75.00) when I ran into C.J. Cherryh.
Okay, I'll tell you that story. It was at a WesterCon,
I think (after too many cons they begin to blend together), and I was pretty much
leading the Bardic Circle in the smokers' room, when a shy-looking lady in a subdued
business skirt-suit tiptoed into the room and took a seat at the far end of the circle.
She was carrying an electric autoharp, which is, to be blunt, a piss-poor instrument.
In short, she looked the perfect picture of Neo. Well, be nice to Neos, I always
say; remember, thou too wert a Neo once.
Well, when it came her turn, the shy little lady
pulled out her autoharp and sang a long, slow, quavery, almost-tuneless ballad in
such a tiny, shy little voice that I couldn't make out the words from less than ten
feet away. Everybody else was yawning, shuffling through their filk-books for next
choices, getting up to make a quick trip to the john, etc. Me, I stayed put and did
my best to look intently interested in the Neo's song (remember, thou too...).
When she'd finished, since I couldn't think of
anything else encouraging, I praised her choice of song and asked, as gallantly as
I could manage, "Did you write it?" She blushed, smiled, nodded, then packed
up her autoharp and scurried off while the next song started up. Little seen, little
heard, soon forgotten. Until next day, when I strolled down to the dealers' room
to see how OCP's sales were doing. At the table, I found Teri bouncing up and down
with excitement, waving frantically the minute she saw me. It seems that Hugo-award
winner C.J. Cherryh had come up to the table an hour before, bought over $100 worth
of books and tapes -- particularly my stuff -- and she wanted to meet me at 2PM,
table 4, in the hotel lounge upstairs. Wow.
Of course, at 2PM I showed up at the hotel lounge
and went looking for table 4. Guess who I found sitting there, nursing a double dark-rum
cooler? Uhuh. Not exactly a Neo: just new to filking. Well, the upshot was that she
was intrigued by filking, wanted to authorize OCP to produce a tape of songs based
on her stories and characters, and had I written anything besides filksongs? Well,
I just happened to have with me a novel based on the MAD MAX movies, which I was
trying (unsuccessfully, it later turned out) to sell to Kennedy-Miller Ltd. I gave
her a copy to read at her leisure and send back when she had time.
A few weeks later, while busy putting tunes to
a clutch of Cherryh-universe songs for the tape FINITY'S END, I got a package from
C.J. 'Twas the copy of the novel, along with a note saying that this was "the
best novel by an unpublished author" that she'd ever read, and how would I like
to contribute stories to her upcoming series, MEROVINGEN NIGHTS? Yup, that's where
I got started as a pro SF writer. The moral of the story is: always be nice to Neos;
you never know where they can take you.
Leslie Fish on Anarchy...
What sort of anarchist future would I like to
see? There's no reason for a government-free society to be nothing but agrarian,
no reason at all that it couldn't be industrial and space-faring. Anarchism is purely
a political theory, holding that "power" -- the ability to force others
to do you will -- is the root of all evil. Money is merely a useful shorthand for
things-done or things-made, and is completely neutral; you can use it to buy food
or buy a law. Money's a useful thing, and I think the poor should have more of it
(hell, I should have more of it!). Power, on the other hand, is something nobody
should have -- except the power to get the other guy's foot off your neck and hand
out of your pocket.
So what I hope to see is a society that's free,
knowledgeable, and can bootstrap itself into space as fast as possible. This planet
is desperately overcrowded and overexploited (if you doubt that, look at Africa;
the reason for the recent rash of famines is that the continent's population has
doubled in the last 30 years, and there's not enough water or farmable land to feed
that many people). The only humane solutions to those two problems are massive birth-control
now and mass cheap-stardrive emigration as soon as we can do it. I fear the alternative,
because I see it coming.
Prediction: there will be massive economic, political
and social collapse around the year 2000, which will cause the killing off of horrendous
numbers of people and do gods-know what damage to our already overstrained environment.
I don't think the collapse itself can be prevented, but maybe its effects can be
made milder with enough education and planning. As to just what I'm doing on that
score, more later.
As to what a free society would be like, nobody
knows for sure because it's been so long since anyone did it on a large scale, and
accounts of the small-scale attempts are hard to come by. I could tell you about
Spain's anarchist provinces in the years before the Spanish Civil War, or the Ukraine
when Nestor Makhno was protecting it, or the pirate society of Tortuga, or life beyond
reach of the law on the American frontier -- too long to describe in detail here
-- but even those give only a partial picture. All those societies were infected
by personal and cultural habits of power-submission, surrounded by law-loving enemies
and "reformers" who limited their capacities and ultimately did them in.
They left intriguing hints of justice, internal peace, lack of bigotry, prosperity,
and flowering of the arts and sciences -- enough to make the experiment well worth
repeating -- but just what a totally free society would evolve into over the long
run, nobody really knows. It would be fun to see though, wouldn't it?
When did I become an anarchist? Sometime in college,
when I saw that passing laws didn't help anybody's rights. Oh sure, we managed to
get the Civil Rights laws on the books -- and the bigots simply found other ways
to keep Blacks poor and powerless and despised. I think what decided me was studying
the Bill of Rights, and seeing how thoroughly those supposedly-absolute Thou Shalt
Nots had been shot full of holes. In SDS I ran into people who pointed me toward
classic anarchist writings and histories, which I read and was amazed by. There have
been several anarchist societies -- I mentioned a few of them earlier -- and that
little fact has been neatly censored out of the common history texts.
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