INTERVIEW WITH VINCENT OMNIAVERITAS

Saddened by the death of this fabled gangster of Eighties SF criticism, we decided to re-visit the Cross Plains Dairy Queen (CT3, CT11) and contact his spirit for a post-mortem interview.

To our surprise we found Omniaveritas, apparently very much alive, sipping a Dr. Pepper with his wife, sometime CT graphic artist Sherry LaPuerta. Omniaveritas wore his usual "Captain Harlock - Space Pirate" T-shirt, a black leather bomber jacket, jeans, and Chinese kung fu shoes. Ms. La Puerta wore a maternity jumper and mirrorshades.

CT: Vince! Heard you were dead.

VO: (grunts) Not a scratch on me. CT, though, is definitely history.

CT: How come?

VO: (with a heavy sigh) A lot of reasons, really... First, Sherry and I have a kid on the way.... Yeah, thanks, we're thrilled about it too.... I have a book to do... And we bought a house. I had to change addresses, so it's a proper time to put an honorable end to this phase of operations. We don't want the next 12th Street tenants to be deluged, and possibly mentally harmed, by CT's twisted mail.

CT: Why on earth stop now? When the stuff you've been touting is really taking off?

VO: That's the very reason. I mean, when CHEAP TRUTH was mentioned in ROLLING STONE I knew the end was near. For CT to be cultural currency for those clapped-out yuppie breadheads... Jesus, what's next? The WALL STREET JOURNAL?

CT: But wasn't publicity the point?

VO: The whole point of CHEAP TRUTH was that anyone can do it. All you need is something to say, and a xerox. You don't need a clique or a bankroll or PR flacks. But now I've got crap like that, so I've changed. CT was a garage-band effort and looked it, deliberately. But I'm not a garage-band guy now. I've taught myself how to play, I got my own label and recording studio, I'm even big in Japan. I could lie about it, and pretend I was still really street-level, but it would be bogus. It would betray the who le ethos of the thing. Truth plus lies always equals lies.

Besides, a lot of the original freedom is gone. People know who I am, and they get all hot and bothered by personalities, instead of ideas and issues. CT can no longer claim the "honesty of complete desperation." That first fine flower of red-hot hysteria is simply gone.

CT: You sound bitter about it.

VO: Fuck no, man, the thing did exactly what I wanted it to. It was a successful experiment and had a big pay-off for all concerned. But it has limits. It's too small to get into the really heavy issues, at length. And it's okay as a straight propaganda broadside, but it's not much use as a forum for balanced discussion.

The work has to come first. The publicity can handle itself now. It's already a fucking juggernaut, so I don't see much point in getting out to push. I got better things to do.

CT: So you're saying you've cut a successful niche for yourself, is that it?

VO: The skiffy establishment, such as it is, still doesn't have the foggiest idea what we're up to. They think we're a bunch of PR hustlers, an inch deep, all candy-flake and chrome. They read CT and think, "gosh, what a hip publicity stunt, this year's model, they can't mean it, though." (Pauses, then bursts into sinister laughter)

CT: What about your readers, though?

VO: If they miss what CT offers, let 'em start their own zines. It's easy! Personally, I'm going to read Steve Brown's SF EYE (at Box 3105, Washington, DC 20010, $7/yr($12 overseas)). Brown's a hip guy and will have some good people working with him, including me if truth be told, though I'll be cleaned up, wearing a shirt and tie, and using another name. I have high hopes for this mag, because it's got room and inclination to tackle the real problems of the field. And I'll be reading Scott Card's SHORT FOR M (at 546 Lindley Road, Greensboro NC 27410, $10/yr.) Card has no taste at all, he gets all damp-eyed over the most laughably inadequate pulp kitsch, but he's usually good for a hoot... It's good to know there's some Neanderthal out there who has the c-word people figured for effete literateurs.... But for now I'm hanging up my shoes. I did what I wanted and I'm quitting while I'm ahead. Could be THE COMPLEAT CHEAP TRUTH will appear as a retrospective, with a copyright and everything. Oh, and everyone shoul d buy the new Arbor House collection, MIRRORSHADES: The Cyberpunk Anthology ($16.95). It's a solid memento of the scene and has the best single summary of Movement ideology.

Someday I may try another zine. But CT's too big now and people lean on it too much. I wanted to point at the mountaintop, I don't want to be the mountain myself.

CT: I guess I see... Any final words?

VO: I hereby declare the revolution over. Long live the provisional government.

CT: Same old Vince... Goodbye all.

"NODE ZERO" DEMOLISHED! Omniaveritas shot! (Version 3)

SFAW Grievance Committee Report

"When rumors reached us of Mr. Omniaveritas' death, we reacted with grave concern. He had, after all, been semiprofessionally published in INTERZONE, and could be broadly regarded as one of us, even though his name and address never showed in the Directory and we never got cent one of dues out of him. So we despatched a crack investigative team of myopic geeks and pudgy women in satin to clarify the situation. If foul play was discovered, we were perfectly prepared to threaten to sic Harlan's lawyer on any publisher involved.

"Our team travelled to the stated address of the CHEAT TRUTH headquarters, 908 West 12th Street in Austin. We were annoyed, and more than a little angry, to discover that 908 is the address of 'House Park Bar-B-Que,' a working-class Texas eatery that has been in continuous operation since 1943. It was full of rude mundanes in baseball hats and overalls who looked us over and laughed aloud.

"The SFAW have been made the butts of a calculated publicity stunt. We may now assure the membership that there is no such publication as 'CHEAT TRUTH' and definitely no such person as 'Omniaveritas.' There is no 'movement' of 'radical hard SF' writers threatening to 'reinvent science fiction from an eighties perspective.' It was only hype and everyone can relax.

"However, the joke is on the hoaxsters. Although there is no such thing as an actual cyperbunk 'ideology,' the term itself has become a viable subgeneric marketing category. Our sources in publishing assure us that the use of the term 'cyberbunk' in cover blurbs guarantees a modest, but solid sales increase, which may well be useful to younger, less established writers.

"A SFAW member in good standing has prepared a helpful beginners' manual, 'Cyperbunk: What It Means, How To Write It,' which will include a glossary of useful subgenre jargon, such as 'wetware,' 'retrofit,' 'download', and 'biohazard.' Other chapters will analyze typical cyperbunk plot structures, including tips on how to have the antihero lose the girl in the end without being too downbeat. Younger SFAW members should consult their agents as to whether they too can profit by joining this flashy, but flimsy bandwagon."

"NODE ZERO" DEMOLISHED! Omniaveritas shot! (Version 2)

"Hello? Am I on the air? Well this is Professor -- woops, this is the voice of the Humanist Peace and Justice Coalition, uh, calling... Well, as everybody knows, we Humanists been putting up with a lot of guff from these cyberpunks, who've been swiping our Nebulas and ridiculing our angst. Then we heard rumors that they'd just called good old Robinson a "no-talent hippydippy arch-wimp." The time had come for a final showdown.

"So we took Connie's, uh, Comrade Tanya's, writing grant, and bought Amtrak tickets for everybody. We met in Austin and had some Campari-and-sodas downtown, then marched on their den of iniquity. And we stood in the alley downstairs and yelled challenges, until the CHEAP TRUTH staff finally heard us over their blaring heavy-metal punk drivel. Then Vince and Sue came out, and stood on the porch upstairs, and yelled abuse, and threatened to grab Nancy and Connie and Karen Joy and dip their braids in the inkwe ll. And that was followed by a barrage of spitwads and legal-sized paper airplanes with paperclips in the4 noses that really stung.

"So we had to get tough! First we gave 'em the introduction to PLANET ON THE TABLE, where Stan has the long talk with James Joyce. We could hear 'em vomiting inside, but they fired back with hard-tech expositive lumps from Toffler and Ilya Prigogine. So we hit 'em with both barrels: a chunk of self-reflexive metafiction and some third-hand magic realism.

"They reeled back howling and we rushed upstairs to the door, only to fined it barricaded with J.G. Ballard re-issues... That was the last straw, because we know Ballard officially belongs to us... Our blood was up, and we swarmed into the place, yelling the sacred name of LeGuin and lashing out right and left with our shepherd's crooks...

"Then suddenly Vince slipped on the slick footing of a copy of OMNI and crashed into his massive bank of computers... Big zaps of electricity jumped out of all this Frankenstein equipment which literateurs were not meant to know, and given all the paper, the whole place went up as fast as Shepard's reputation... Sue Denim sneaked out by disguising herself as a progressive feminist writer, and the last thing we heard was Vince screaming, "I meant Spider Robinson, you assholes."

"NODE ZERO" DEMOLISHED! Omniaveritas shot! (Version 1)

"This is the voice of the Skiffy Defense Initiative. On November 26, 1986, our armed counterterrorist strike force received authorization from the National Security Council, or guys who looked and acted just like them, to surround the CHEAP TRUTH terrorist cell and neutralize them by any means necessary.

"A leak in the Marxist publication ROLLING STONE allowed us at last to establish irrefutable proof of linkage between CHEAP TRUTH's activities and the blustering madman known as the "Qaddafi of Technosleaze." At the modest cost of half a billion dollars, an attack was launched in a healthy condition of total press secrecy.

"Off-duty Dorsai mercenaries, freshly flown in from contra training camps in Honduras, opened ground fire with 9mm folding-stick Uzi submachine guns, silenced, Ingram Mac-10s, and Heckler-and-Koch MP5 automatic sidearms, meanwhile shouting a challenge and requesting all inside to identify themselves. They were met with savage return-fire from Czech-made Skorpion automatic pistols and cheap, cruddy, but witheringly effective Soviet-supplied AK47 automatic rifles.

"To our surprise we found that the supposedly 'simple wooden cabin' known as Node Zero had been armored in Kevlar and crammed with dozens of Cuban construction workers. Rescuer casualties mounted, and it became necessary to call in an airstrike.

"Blueprints of the Stealth bomber then strafed the terrorist fortress, followed by blistering orbital fire from X-ray lasers, particle beams, and magnetic rail-guns. This caused the enemies, with all their bad ideas, to vaporize without a trace and should have been done a long time ago."

"NODE ZERO" DEMOLISHED! Omniaveritas shot!

(Austin, Texas November 1986) "Node Zero," the global info-nexus of the CHEAP TRUTH publishing empire, has been reduced to smoldering wreckage in a poorly-realized action-sequence right out of the worst tradition of macho adventure fiction.

A dead Hollywood stunt-dummy, with several burst squibs of chicken-blood attached to its head and torso, was discovered by hard-boiled investigators. The body has been identified as that of CHEAP TRUTH editor Vincent Omniaveritas.

Credit for the attack was immediately claimed in phone-calls to a fictional news service where guys wear snap-brim hats that say "press" and have teletypes that go clackaclackaclacka. We are reprinting the statements in their entirety.

STURGEON: MERCURY PLUS X

Sturgeon? The name was magnetic. There it was, perpetually cropping up attached to the stories I most admired. Sturgeon: quite an ordinary Anglo-American word among exotics like A. E. Van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Heinlein, Simak, and Kuttner. Yet - spikey, finny, ODD. And it was not his original name. Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon was born Edward Hamilton Waldo. To the usual boring undeserving parents. That was on Staten Island, the year the first World War ended.

So there were two of him, as there are of many a good writer. A bright side, a dark side -- much like our old SF image of Mercury, remember, so much more interesting than banal reality. He had a mercurial temperament.

The bright side was the side everyone loved. There was something so damned nice, charming, open, empathic, and ELUSIVE about Ted that women flocked to him. Men too. Maybe he was at the mercy of his own fey sexuality. If so, he was quizzical about it, as about everything. One of his more cutesy titles put it admirably: "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" Not if it was Sturgeon, said a too-witty friend.

He played his guitar. He sang. He shone. He spoke of his philosophy of love.

Ted honestly brought people happiness. If he was funny, it was a genuine humor which sprang from seeing the world aslant. A true SF talent. Everyone recognized his strange quality -- "faunlike," some nut dubbed it; faunlike he certainly looked. Inexplicable, really.

Unsympathetic stepfather, unsatisfactory adolescence. Funny jobs, and "Ether Breather" out in ASTOUNDING in 1939. So to an even funnier job, science fiction writer. It's flirting with disaster.

I could not believe those early stories: curious subject matter, bizarre resolutions, glowing style. And about sexuality. You could hardly believe your luck when one of Ted's stories went singing through your head.

"It," with Cartier illustrations, in UNKNOWN. Terrifying. "Derm Fool." Madness. The magnificent "Microcosmic God," read and re-read. "Killdozer," appearing after a long silence. There were to be other silences. "Baby is Three:" again the sense of utter incredibility with complete conviction, zinging across a reader's synapses. By a miracle, the blown-up version, "More Than Human," was no disappointment either. This was Sturgeon's caviar dish. Better even than "Venus Plus X," with its outre' sexuality in a hermaphrodite utopia.

As for those silences. Something sank Sturgeon. His amazing early success, his popularity with fans and stardom at conventions -- they told against the writer. Success is a vampire. In the midst of life we are in definite trouble. They say Sturgeon was the first author in the field ever to sign a six-book contract. A six-book contract was a rare mark of distinction, like being crucified. A mark of extinction. Ted was no stakhanovite and the deal did for him; he was reduced to writing a novelization of a schlock TV series, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," to fulfill his norms.

At one time, he was reduced further to writing TV pilot scripts for Hollywood. He lived in motels or trailers, between marriages, between lives. Those who read "The Dreaming Jewels" or "Venus Plus X" or the story collections forget that writing is secretly a heavy load, an endless battle against the disappointments which come from within as well as without -- and reputation a heavier load. Ted was fighting his way back to the light when night came on.

About Ted's dark side.

Well, he wrote that memorable novel, "Some of Your Blood," about this crazy psychotic who goes for drinking menstrual discharge. Actually, it does not taste as bad as Ted made out. That was his bid to escape the inescapable adulation.

One small human thing he did. He and I, with James Gunn, were conducting the writers' workshop at the Conference of the Fantastic at Boca Raton, Florida. This was perhaps three years ago.

Our would-be writers circulated their effusions around the table for everyone's comment. One would-be was a plump, pallid, unhappy lady. Her story was a fantasy about a guy who tried three times to commit suicide, only to be blocked each time by a green monster from Hell who wanted him to keep on suffering. Sounds promising, but the treatment was hopeless.

Dumb comments around the table. I grew impatient with their unreality. When the story reached me, I asked the lady right out, "Have you ever tried to commit suicide?"

Unexpected response. She stared at me in shock. Then she burst into a hailstorm of tears, collapsing onto the table... "Three times," she cried. Everyone looked fit to faint.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," I said. "I've tried it too."

"So have I," said Sturgeon calmly.

He needn't have come in like that. He just did it bravely, unostentatiously, to support me, to support her, to support everyone. And I would guess there was a lot of misery and disappointment in Ted's life, for all the affection he generated. Yet he remained kind, loving, giving. (The lady is improving by the way. We're still in touch. That's another story.)

If that does not strike you as a positive story, I'm sorry. I'm not knocking suicide, either. Everyone should try it at least once.

Ted was a real guy, not an idol, an effigy, as some try to paint him. He was brilliant, so he suffered. I know beyond doubt that he would be pleased to see me set down some of the bad times he had. He was not one to edit things out. Otherwise he would have been a less powerful writer.

There are troves of lovely Sturgeon tales (as in the collection labelled "E Pluribus Unicorn"), like "Bianca's Hands," which a new generation would delight in. He wrote well, if sometimes over-lushly. In many ways, Ted was the direct opposite of the big technophile names of his generation, Doc Smith, Poul Anderson, Robert Heinlein, et al. His gaze was more closely fixed on people. For that we honor him, and still honor him. Good for him that he never ended up in that prick's junkyard where they pay you a million dollars advance for some crud that no sane man wants to read.

Ted died early in May in Oregon, of pneumonia and other complications. Now he consorts with Sophocles, Dick, and the author of the Kama Sutra. He had returned from a holiday in Hawaii, taken in the hopes he might recover his health there. That holiday, incidentally, was paid for by another SF writer -- one who often gets publicity for the wrong things. Thank God, there are still some good guys left. We are also duly grateful for the one just departed.

Brian Aldiss

CHEAP TRUTH Top Ten (with helpful quotes from locals)

TRILLION YEAR SPREE by Brian Aldiss "assisted by" David Wingrove (Gollancz L15) Authors tremble for their reps as "Britain's oldest Young Turk" prepares to unleash this massive new version of his 1973 SF litcrit classic. Described as "completely revised," "brutally frank," and "bang up to date," this hefty opus is an essential accoutrement for the serious, globally-minded critic or fan. Without doubt, SPREE will once again prove the unquestioned superiority of Britain as a source of intelligent, informed criticism and provocative, well-formulated literary analysis. Most of it will be about Americans.

THE UNCONQUERED COUNTRY by Geoff Ryman (Allen & Unwin L9.95) Slightly expanded version of the instantly classic INTERZONE novella, a shocking, brutally depressing SF tragedy that directly confronts the reader with high-voltage visionary excess. "I wept aloud!" "Really great illustrations!" "The best thing INTERZONE ever published!" "Most of the new stuff is padding."

MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock (Gollancz L8.95) Archetypal fantasy concerning a tiny patch of ancient English forest where the mystical soul of Britain, or at least a lot of deeply portentous literary/mythic symbols, seem to reside. Involuted, damp, very insular, vaguely creepy. "Where it's at in Britain today!" "A marvel!" "Brilliantly written and perceptive!" Britons adore this book.

THE BRIDGE by Iain Banks. (Macmillan L9.95) The third novel by the wunderkind Scottish author of the amazing WASP FACTORY and cryptic WALKING ON GLASS. The subterranean fantasy influences of this vividly imaginative and cheerfully sadistic writer have come directly to the fore in THE BRIDGE, but don't tell his publishers. "The most compulsive and original writer working today!" "Obviously possessed of twisted genius!" "Wow!"

ESCAPE PLANS by Gwyneth Jones (Orion L3.50) Bizarre effort by shocktrooper of Britain's radical feminist SF contingent, a literary clique which possesses admirable discipline, long-term plans, and a well-developed and pitiless sociopolitical ideology. "Lesbian tripe that chokes the reader to death with jargon!" "Part of the revolutionary struggle to wrest possibilities from limitations!" Genuinely twisted, ESCAPE PLANS features spaceships that are not allowed to go anywhere and scrabblingly desperate social uprisings. Impressive energy level and imaginative concentration make Gwyneth Jones a writer to watch.

SONGBIRDS OF PAIN by Garry Kilworth (Gollancz L8.95) Collection by highly regarded short story writer. Exotic settings, baroque, obsessive prose. "Exceptionally good." "Best I've read in years." "I believe in science fiction as a serious literature," declared the author in his intro, a declaration that would be more convincing if it didn't have to be made at all.

BOOKS OF BLOOD v. 1-6 by Clive Barker (Sphere). This fervid and fertile six-volume collection of horror shorts has the clammy intimacy of a blowjob from the dead. "The future of horror." "Blows out the genre's amps." Heartening proof that a British writer of talent and determination can rise suddenly from obscurity to completely paralyze a transatlantic readership.

GHASTLY BEYOND BELIEF by Kim Newman and Neil Gaiman (Arrow L2.50). A much-needed dose of comic relief, this book collects a long series of horrible excesses and solecisms in written SF and sci-fi films. Convulsively funny, it must be read to be disbelieved. None of your "dry British humor" guff here -- you'll wince, you'll scream, you'll beg for a chance to breath. "The ultimate toilet book!"