Any Day Now - Terry Bisson

   2018; 344 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Alternate History; Coming of Age Fiction; The 1960s.  Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

 

    It’s the 1950s, and all over the USA, the times they are a-changin’.

 

    You can hear it on the radio.  The “big band” music of the two previous decades is being replaced by a new sound that makes you want to snap your fingers and move your feet.  They call it “jazz” for whatever reason.

 

    Clayton “Clay” Bewley Bauer’s was just in grade school back then, in a small town called Calhoun, Kentucky; just outside the much bigger city of Owensboro.  His future, like all those in the Bewley clan, is already set in place:

    Graduate from high school,

    Graduate from Vanderbilt,

    Get a job in upper management somewhere.

 

    That sounds good.  The trouble is, that’s the “old way”, and Clay yearns to be part of those times that are a-changin’.

 

What’s To Like...

    In Any Day Now we follow Clay through three phases of his life.  Let’s call the first one his “Jazz Phase”, in the late 50s, wherein high-schooler Clay is introduced to new music from his friends and new ideas in the science-fiction books he reads voraciously.

 

    The next one is his college years in the early 60s; and we’ll label this his “Beatnik Phase”.  Clay eschews his family's tradition of attending Vanderbilt and instead opts for a small college in Minnesota.  But he soon drops out of there and moves to New York to be part of the Beat Scene and fulfill his career dream of becoming a poet.  His third phase is his “Commune Phase”, set in the late 60s and early 70s, after he moves out west and embraces the hippie lifestyle, including partaking of lots of recreational substances.

 

    The storyline resonated with me in several ways.  Clay’s approximately the same age as I am; we both spent our childhoods in small towns; and both had our long-haired, “Peace-Love-Dove” counterculture days.  To be honest, though, I never was tempted to go live in a commune.

 

    The first half of the book is Clay's Coming-of-Age saga, and felt like Terry Bisson was incorporating parts of his youth into the story.  One example: both the author and the protagonist were born and raised in Owensboro, Kentucky.  At that point I was disappointed that there wasn’t a bit of the Alternative History that the Amazon blurb promised.  Then abruptly, around 50% Kindle, a timeline anomaly pops up, and leads to a very different world that's going to sorely test Clay’s ideals.

 

    The ending is so-so.  After some exciting events in the “commune community”, Clay gets a much-needed rest.  But nothing is resolved, which makes me wonder if Terry Bisson intended to one day write a sequel to this.  Alas, it won’t happen.  Terry passed away in January 2024, and Wikipedia lists Any Day Now as his final full-length novel.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 24 ratings and 11 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.36/5 based on 189 ratings and 38 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    "It has to be real jazz,” said Clay.

    “So what’s real jazz?” Ruth Ann asked.  They were sitting on the hood of the Ford with the motor cooling underneath, still warm on their bottoms.

    “Felonious Monk, Charles Mingles, Billy Ladyday,” said Clay.  “Very experimental stuff.  But it has to swing.  White people don’t do it as well.  Coal Train is good.”  (loc. 447)

 

    They were calling themselves Redeemers.  They wore masks on TV and talked about freedom.

    “The freedom to burn things,” Rotella said.

    They burned bridges in Indiana, barns in Idaho, buses in Detroit, cars and crosses in Georgia, and two kidnapped King’s Men in a locked shed in Illinois.  MLK called them misguided pawns; the UN called them terrorists.

    “Terrorism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” said Haig.  “It’s time the silent majority spoke up for America.”

    “Got a light?” muttered Clay.  (loc. 3649)

 

Kindle Details…

    The Kindle version of Any Day Now is presently priced at $9.99 at Amazon, which is rather steep.  Other Terry Bisson e-books are in the $2.99-$9.99 range.  It appears that a number of the author’s best-known works, such as Bears Discover Fire, are not yet available in e-book format.

 

Ernest was a rich kid working at being poor.  (loc. 862)

    There’s a fair amount of profanity in Any Day Now.  I counted 22 instances in the first 20%, but to be fair, half of those were the n-word racial epithet, which was mostly used to show Clay didn’t like the word, even though it was used frequently in the 1950s.

 

    Recreational drug usage is one of Clay’s frequent habits, and is generally presented in a positive and/or humorous way here, such as learning how “hold in” a toke, and how to properly prepare peyote before partaking of it.  I thought Clay’s first acid trip was presented particularly well.  Gay people are a common occurrence in both the Beat Scene and the hippie communes.  So if you’re a homophobe, you probably should skip this book.

 

    My biggest issue with Any Day Now is the storytelling.  Terry Bisson’s writing style is good, but the plotline doesn’t go anywhere or reach any conclusion.  Plus the previously mentioned genre-switch at the halfway point didn’t work at all for me.  Moreover, judging from the extremely low Goodreads ratings and several reviews there, I’m not the only one that felt this way.

 

    Despite that, I enjoyed Any Day Now, presumably because I could relate to so many of Clay’s experiences and have enjoyed so many of his sci-fi novels.  So let’s just call this one an ambitious and noble literary experiment that didn’t work.  RIP, Terry Bisson.  Your devoted fans dearly miss you.

 

    5½ Stars.  One last thing.  At one point during his Beat Phase, Clay goes to hear a 1950s hipster speaker by the name of Lord Buckley.  If you’ve never heard of him, go to YouTube and listen to some of his routines.  You will be amazed.

Bears Discover Fire - Terry Bisson

1993; 250 pages.  Genre : Anthology; Short Stories; Fantasy.  New Author? : No.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    19 short stories from the imaginative mind of Terry Bisson, and published in various Sci Fi magazines in 1990-93.  They vary in length from 3 to 45 pages.

    The title story, Bears Discover Fire, is the best known, and won all sorts of awards : the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Sturgeon.  They're Made Out Of Meat is also famous, and was a Hugo nominee.

The Best of the Lot...
    Over Flat Mountain.  A gigantic upheaval raises the Appalachian Mountains 100,000 feet.  Yeah, the wear and tear on a semi trying to get over that hump is staggering  But it's all worth it when the driver picks up a young boy hitchhiking. 

    Press Ann. ATM options like you've never dreamed of.  Two Guys From The Future.  The good news for a struggling painter is that she's going to become famous.  The guys from the future say so.  The bad news is they're here to collect/preserve some of her works that she hasn't even painted yet.

    The Shadow Knows.  The last, and the longest of the stories.  SETI worked!  We've heard back from beyond the Solar System.   But not in the way we expected.

Kewlest New Word...
Importunate : persistent to the point of being annoying and/or intrusive.

Excerpts...
   "It all boils down to this," I said.  "Why did God give George wings only to have them cut off?"
    The minister told me that the ways of God were strange.  "Why does He give man life," he said, "only to take it away again?  Why did He create the sky and not allow the fish to see it?"  He continued in this vein for several minutes, and then concluded, "You know in your heart that the doctor and I are right - the child's wings must be removed."  (pgs. 74-75)

    "But we were trying to obey the law!"
    "That makes it even worse.  The law is a just master, but it can be harsh with those who try to sabotage its spirit by hypocritically observing its letter.  However, I'm going to delay sentencing on Conspiracy and Hoarding because we have an even more serious charge to deal with here."
    "Sentencing?  We haven't even been convicted yet."
    "Young lady, are you splitting hairs with me?"  (pg. 85)

If a lion could talk, we couldn't understand it  (Wittgenstein)  (pg. 206)
    The stories have different themes and settings; but each has a Bisson-trademarked "twist" in them.  This is Fantasy, and there is a lot of Surrealism, and very little Terror.

    The story Bears Discover Fire is a wonderful example of this, and a microcosm of Bisson's full-length novels.  It's set in Appalachia (Bisson's home ground), but then tickles your mind with a bunch of bears making bonfires, holding torches, and sitting around campfires eating newberries.

   But that isn't the story's focus; it's just the backdrop.  The main emphasis is a warm, interrelationship of a backwoods family.  And like them, you the reader are expected to just accept the ursine unnaturalness.  Weird, eh?  That's a typical Bisson technique, and he excels at it.

    Only a few of the stories seemed so-so, and your opinion of which ones are "meh" and which are "teh" won't match up with mine.  My generic advice re reading Anthologies applies here : read a couple per session; if you try to finish it in one sitting, it dulls the enjoyment.  7½ Stars, but only because there's a limit to how high I can rate any Anthology.  If you've never read any Bisson before, BDF is a nice way to get acquainted.

Voyage to the Red Planet - Terry Bisson

1990; 236 pages. New Author? : No. Genre : Sci-Fi; Sub-Genre : Space Opera. Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

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The book's title says it all - a hardy little troupe of spacefarers blast off on the good ship Mary Poppins, with the goal of becoming the first earthlings to set foot on Mars. But they aren't astronauts (NASA's been sold to the private commercial conglomerate, Chase-Gillette); they're going to Mars to shoot a movie.

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What's To Like...

Yet again, Terry Bisson creates a fascinating universe and lets you spend some time there. The USA has just come out of a major depression, and the government has had to sell most of its assets - including the National Parks Department, the US Navy, and NASA. In industry, mergers are the key to survival, and it makes for some strange-but-powerful bedfellows. There is a rumor that Disney-Gerber wants to buy the United Nations.

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There is a curious blend of "hard" and "soft" science-fiction here. On one hand, Bisson correctly accounts for time delays due to the huge distances in the solar system. A phone message takes 15 minutes to relay; and the crew of the Mary Poppins goes into hibernation to slow down the aging involved in a several-year trip to Mars.

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OTOH, Mars is made out to be a rather temperate planet, with enough oxygen in its atmosphere to allow our heroes to take off their space helmets for short periods of time. Uh-uh. I don't think so.

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The storyline is okay. Things don't go as planned (naturally); some amazing things are discovered on Mars; and there's even a "too many folks in the lifeboat" dilemma to be resolved.

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Excerpts...

"Kirov?" It was Markson again.

"She's, uh" - Kirov was shaking her head and waving her hands - "consulting with Ranger Johnson, the station chief," Jeffries said.

"Then Bass."

"He's consulting with them." Bass was shaking his head.

"Then Jeffries."

"Speaking, dammit."

"Good. You're just the man I wanted to talk to." (pg. 48)

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"I can't imagine what it was like in those days," Greetings said. "The government doing everything for you. Building streets, delivering mail; how did people develop any initiative at all? They must have been like robots."

"Wasn't all that bad," said Jeffries as he passed through on his way to the bridge. (pg. 107)

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Gravity is the enemy of every boy. (Ray Bradbury)

Voyage to the Red Planet has some weaknesses. The pacing is poor - more than half the book is done before we land on Mars; and there are some major loose ends left unresolved. This screams either for a sequel or a better editor.

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But those weaknesses are more than offset by the underlying humor, the neat cast of characters, and most of all, the fabulous world laid out for you. You don't read Bisson novels for their storylines; you read them for their settings.

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I enjoyed VTTRP, but if you've never read anything by Terry Bisson, this is probably not the book to start with. 6½ Stars.

The Pickup Artist - Terry Bisson

2001; 240 pages. Genre : Fiction; Satire. Overall Rating : "B".

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Hank Shapiro is a Pickup Artist. There's too much art in the world - paintings, albums & CD's, books, films, etc. Some of it needs to be catalogued , archived, and destroyed so that new works can take its place. Hank is part of the "Deletions" division, going around and picking up those items specified for elimination from people who voluntarily turn them in. He might even give you a rebate if you're nice. For the involuntary seizures, there's an "Enforcement" division.

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All goes well until one day when he picks up a Hank Williams LP, and realizes this is who his parents named him after. Alas, HW is on the "Eliminated" list and no one, not even a Pickup Artist is allowed to listen to him anymore.

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What's To Like...

There's a Fahrenheit 451 storyline here, but the main charm is the vividly-detailed world Bisson paints, which is set in New York City as the story opens. He's created some great characters. There's Henry (female), who's 8½ years pregnant and wants to go to Vegas (which has seceded from the USA and is now an independent city-state) to find the father-to-be, who ran off years ago. There's Homer, Hank's lovable old dog, who dies, yet is kept in existence through the wonders of illicit drugs. And there's 77 Indian Bobs, genetically identical clones who were made so that modern man can appreciate the noble Native American savage. Unfortunately, funding ran out before they could clone their 77 female companions.

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And then there's the satire. On a deeper level, The Pickup Artist is Bisson's vision of where American culture is going. He shows us Misdemeanor Bars, where you can go to listen to deleted music and watch deleted DVD's. The authorities are aware of these, but generally let them subsist. He shows us Flee Markets, where anything - legal or otherwise - can be bought and sold. But they only have a 24-hour grace period in any given state, so every night they flee across state lines. There are several drugs in Bisson's world, the most interesting of which is "Dig" (a take-off of meth, perhaps?) whose users have an uncontrollable urge to dig - in old landfills for discarded trinkets - when they're high on it. And although money and credit exist, the preferred currency is Indian casino chips, despite the fact that the exchange rates always rip you off.

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The chapters are short, and separated by "Interludes" wherein Bisson gives the history of the art extermination movement. And he gives some great examples (such as "A Canticle For Liebowitz" by Walter Miller) of worthy artists whose works have already pretty much been forgotten.

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New/Kewl Words...

Midden : a dunghill; a refuse heap. Ephemera : collectible items not originally intended to last for more than a short time, such as postcards, labels, posters, tickets, etc.

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Excerpts...

"I mean the tree of art, unless pruned, will stop bearing fruit."

"We're not just art," I said. "We do music, literature and movies. No fruit."

"I know," she said. "It's a metaphor."

"We don't do metaphors either," I said. Then added : "It's a joke." (pg. 39)

.

"I'm dead! I'll be dead from now on. Forever!"

"It's just the deal," said Henry. "It's okay."

"It's not okay!" Though his dessicated body had ceased, or almost ceased, to smell, Bob's breath was fouler than ever. I had to keep backing up just to talk to him.

"He has to be completely dead," said Womack, who was standing in the doorway, shaking his head. "There are regulations, even here in Vegas."

"He really is pretty muich dead," said Henry. "This is just a residual effect of the LastRites which saturates the alveolar tissues." (pg. 197. LastRites is a drug)

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What if...

I enjoyed The Pickup Artist, and it got me to wondering - what if we really had such a regulation? Would it help Kelly Clarkson's career if, say, all of Janis Joplin's music was deleted? Would more people go see The Lovely Bones if Star Wars wasn't around? Would it be easier for aspiring poets and novelists to get published if we no longer had Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller? Maybe Bisson's premise here has merit. Who cares anymore about Frank Sinatra or Walter Miller?

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I give The Pickup Artist a "B" because I always enjoy spending time in his worlds. It's a good book, as long as you're in the mood for well thought-out satire and don't mind the plotline playing second fiddle. Bisson is not for everyone, but you should read one of his books anyway, before he passes away and his works are deleted to make way for newer fiction.

Talking Man - Terry Bisson

1986; 192 pages. Genre : Science Fantasy. Overall Rating : B-.
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Talking Man is a wizard. But he is also a dreamer. Along with his soulmate, Dgene, they dreamed this universe into existence. Then Talking Man fell in love with his creation. So he hid in it, and lived in a small housetrailer in the hills of Kentucky with his 16-year-old daughter, Crystal. But the cosmos hath no fury like a Soulmate spurned, and Dgene is out to un-make the dream.
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What's To Like...
Bisson is a different sort of Sci-Fi writer. His forte lies in creating fabulous, vivid worlds. The back-cover blurbs describe this one thusly :
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"The geography shimmers and melts, catfish as big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways." (snip) "Kentucky back roads, junkyards, fast food and magic..."
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Crystal and a boy named Williams find themselves driving a borrowed Mustang from Kentucky to New Mexico to the North Pole in order to help Talking Man keep his dream (and their world) alive. However, like one of my recurring dreams, the "real" is shifting almost constantly. Whole states disappear, the Mississippi River now runs through a Grand Canyon-like channel, the US-Canadian border is heavily mined, and the names of cigarette and candy brands keep changing.
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Bisson is kind of the antithesis of Tolkien. He presents his universes as is and without ever addressing the whys. Denver burns, but we never find out what caused this. An owl figurine is an artifact of monumental importance, but the reason is never detailed. Tolkien would obsess over the causes of such things; Bisson ignores them.
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Excerpt...
"There are two ways to tell a wizard. One is by the blue light that plays around his tires when he is heading north on a wet pavement under the northern lights, his headlights pointed toward the top of the world that so many talk about but so few have actually seen."The other is by his singing."
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I give Talking Man a B-. It's an engaging story, but in the end I was left with too many unanswered questions. For a change, I wouldn't've minded another 100 pages added to the book, in order to delve into the reasons for everything.
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Postscript...
Oh look! My good friend Thursday Next from Jasper Fforde's series hopped into this book, and brought me back a photo of the aforementioned "Catfish as big as boats". Thanks, Thursday!

Pirates of the Universe - Terry Bisson

1996; 285 pages. Genre : Post-apocalyptic sci-fi. Awards : A New York Times 1996 Notable Book of the Year. Overall Rating : C+..

    In an energy-depleted world, the Ranger "Gun" hopes to make one more space-harvest and earn admission into the fantasy-park retirement-community owned by Disney-Windows called "Pirates of the Universe". Unfortunately, his bank account's been frozen; his e-mail is blocked; his brother's a runaway convict; and his family's being forced out of their home. Plus someone wants him to join a revolution, although Gun's not sure exactly who, and what it is revolting against.

What's To Like...
    It's set in a post-apocalyptic world; it has dimension-travel (one of my favorite pastimes); and Gunther's spaceship is the U.S.S. Penn State, named after one of my alma maters. Kewlness.

.A subtle humor permeates the book. For instance, the pricey virtual ...um... pleasure girl (who is accessed via a potent opiate) is copy-protected. So you can cyber-enjoy her company, but you aren't allowed to retain her image in your memory.

.You run into a host of new terms here - Peteys, Gens, Doggits, The Tangle, the Overworld, Softies, Rangers, Sierras, Fundamentals, the Protocols, The Three, Disney-Windows, et al. Bisson's style here "assumes" you are already familiar with these. Some, like D-W, are easy to deduce. Others...

What's Not To Like...
    POTU is a slow-read. You spend a lot of time trying to figure out all those new terms. I'm still not sure what a gen is. Neither is Gun.

.   The bigger weakness is the storyline itself. It's kinda like the movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The book keeps plodding along, right up until the very end. Then the "this changes everything" moment occurs, and... and... and then the book (or movie, in the case of CEot3K) ends. What a letdown. Some of us like to read/see the other side of "this changes everything".

This was the NYT's 1996 Notable Book of the Year??
    Terry Bisson is the author who finished Walter Miller's sequel ("midquel", actually) to A Canticle for Liebowitz, when WM had the misfortune to pass away after spending several decades getting the midquel about 95% done. I still haven't found that one, and POTU was the only Bisson work the used bookstore had.

.   According to Wikipedia, Bisson mostly does short stories. He's won a Hugo and a Nebula Award. He's only written a couple full-length novels, one of which is POTU. Frankly, this would've been better done as a short story. The 225-page build-up - while amusing, well-written, witty, and oozing with satire - could've been distilled down to 50 pages, followed by a 50-page boffo climax.
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    Still, it is reasonably well-done, with lots of things to chuckle at and to puzzle out. And, like A Canticle for Liebowitz, POTU is done in a very unique style. That makes it a worthwhile book for Sci-Fi fans and people interested in unusual literary techniques. For everyone else, this might be an "optional" read.