GUERNICA NIGHT

Barry N. Malzberg

www.sfgateway.com

Enter the SF Gateway …

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

Contents

Title Page

Gateway Introduction

Contents

Epigraph

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: DANCE:

The future as entertainment; entertainment as the
future. Dance, Trinidad, Capitol.

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

PART TWO:

Politics as the future, the future as politics: Capitol,
Dance, Trinidad.

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

PART THREE:

History as entertainment; entertainment as history:
Manhattan.

Chapter I

Chapter II

PART FOUR:

Guernica.

Chapter I

EPILOGUE

AN APPRECIATION

Jeff Clark

Website

Also by Barry N. Malzberg

Author Bio

Copyright

In Memory of Gil Orlovitz: 1919–1973

‘Therein the milky eclipse of the sun,

and no blindness; the roaring and we are not deaf;

and the acid, and we have not been eaten away.’

7 April, 11 pm.

PROLOGUE

Here we are in Disney Land/Disney World. Disney Land or Disney World; hard to make the changes on these – one in California, the other in Florida – but the continent has become spliced, as we know, and Disney, God rest him at the age of sixty-five and through eternity, believed in the controlled and timeless environment, stripped of any conception of space. Disney was right. This is the concept that must be held at all costs, unless, of course, you hold that he is wrong, which is also a possibility. Right. Wrong. California. Florida. Here we are: this is the point.

Here we are in Disney Land/Disney World; clutching the strange hands of those with whom we came, we move slowly through the ropes under the chanting of the attendants, swatting at the insects of habitation, toward the exhibit of the martyred President. The martyred President has become a manikin activated by machinery, tubes and wiring; he delivers selected portions of his famous addresses, stumbling back and forth upon the stage, his plastic joints trembling off-rhythm, and this proves that history can be not only educational: it can be genuinely entertaining. There is a certain anxiety. It is near closing time, and we fear that the exhibit will be shut before it is our time to pass through the lines; how could we return to our homes, our friends, without being able to say that we have seen the exhibit of the martyred President? It is impossible for us to make this admission; we would be the laughingstock of the neighborhood if we admitted that we had gone to Disney Land/Disney World without seeing that for which he is most famous (having already ridden the monorail, which is a very distant second choice), but lying about it would be most difficult. We would be quizzed on details very closely, as are all returnees from the Disney exhibitions, and sooner or later our ignorance would be shown; we would stagger up against the recollection of one who knew better … and what then would there be to say? One can hardly come to grips with this.

The sky, a dense inverted bowl, falls tightly over the World or Land of Disney tonight. At all costs Disney wanted a controlled environment, but he was not able, up to the point of his death from cancer, to figure out a way to keep the atmosphere itself out; given a little more time, he would have worked out something … but now the air, laden with insects and small heat flashes, presses on us closely; for a moment there is that discommoded sense of a certain lurch toward collapse; irreality seems to embrace us … a small explosion of fatigue at the end of a long day. Not to think of it. The line is moving now, the attendants whisking us along, and just as we think that we will not get into the exhibit this time but will surely make it on the next, we are allowed through – the very last, in fact, of the throng to get in – and as we move through the ropes into the passageway the feeling of fatigue passes. It is impossible that we could have ever felt faint. It was merely the anticipation. Now that we are in, now that we are going to see the exhibit, that weak sensation goes away, and we sense little burbles of laughter beginning to move viscously inside. We feel fine. Everybody feels fine. Children are smiling. Over us is the smooth bulkhead of the building; the cooling climate system of Disney whisks its way through us. Strangers and family, friends and acquaintances jostle around us as we move down the ramp and into an auditorium, take a seat at a high place in the last row. We look through the auditorium and see that every face here is that of someone we know, if not from a long time ago, then from quick meetings in the corridors of the other exhibits. Nods are exchanged, little waves, greetings. Fingers prod at our hands, and we prod them back. The lights glisten, then fall away, and we are in the darkness. Far down on the stage the curtains part. The dead President shuffles forward. The dead President raises his hand. The dead President begins to move on the stage, side to side, and from behind him comes the sound of anthems. He greets us.

We listen to him. The darkness draws us together, and truly never have we felt so close; never have I felt so close – I must admit this – to myself, to some sense of the nation which joins me together as the President begins to speak. Phrases roll limpidly from him; his gestures are rather mechanical, but then again, bathed in the spotlight, his visage is very lifelike, his flesh of an excellent hue. The music rises. He continues.

Listening to him, we feel that we are on the verge of an insight; an insight so deep and strange, true and final that it will eclipse everything that we have known before, every portion of our lives, and in this attitude it is easy to understand Disney’s genius as well; his ability to give us the past in a way that will become our future. And so, in perfect harmony, accord, we listen and listen, the little figure yanking itself around the stage and, as the rifle fire begins, leveling at his neck, then temple, in the old and accustomed way. It is with a sheer outcry of love that we watch him fall toward the stage as the cleansing fires begin … and the walls of the exhibit fall away from us; they dissolve utterly, leaving us in Disney Land/Disney World forever, and as the insects come over us, it is as if we too have become artifacts, the insects muttering secrets into our ears that will in turn activate us someday so that we, actors, may create new histories for the future.

PART 1

DANCE