The Nova Trilogy

[version]

Soft Machine's very Heart of Darkness isn't it?

Yeah, I thought of The Drowned World reading all the vivid jungle description.

A bunch of it's spun out from Burroughs' search for yagé. There's a scene in The Yage Letters where a boy leads him to a shaman who gives it to him and he staggers out down the path, vomiting all over the place, then later talks about what it does to your perception of time.

When you read that, you can see where 'The Mayan Caper' came from.

 

[Benny Bunter]

WSB: Venus, the actual landscape, etc. This has been a theme in science fiction for some time. And most writers have equated it with something like South America, a lush tropical scene teeming with poisonous exotic life forms. I would mention in this connection the novel Fury by Henry Kuttner, which takes place on Venus, and there are a number of descriptions in science fiction.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Reading Ticket that Exploded now - would love to get hold of that Hugh Kuttner book in the above post, there are sections of it cut in that are brilliant - The "happy cloak", some type of bio-weapon developed from a Venusian submarine creature that subsumes its prey, only the victim doesn't want to escape and experiences its ingestion as sexual pleasure.

 

[version]

- The "happy cloak", some type of bio-weapon developed from a Venusian submarine creature that subsumes its prey, only the victim doesn't want to escape and experiences its ingestion as sexual pleasure.

He mentions this in The Adding Machine too, doesn't sound far off the internet.

 

[Benny Bunter]

He mentions this in The Adding Machine too, doesn't sound far off the internet.

Yeah, it's the sort of thing where you probably wouldn't make the connection if you'd just read the original pulp sci-fi book, but when Burroughs cuts it in with all this other stuff it becomes really prophetic, not dated at all.

 

[Benny Bunter]

This Henry Kuttner guy was a Lovecraft disciple too apparently, which really ties in with all these monstrous alien characters you get in the nova trilogy. Quite intrigued to read him

 

[version]

It was interesting reading Burroughs talk about his own stuff in the essays. He says if he's remembered for anything it'll be his characters, which doesn't sound right to me. You remember Lee, Benway and a bunch of the names (The Heavy Metal Kid) but it's his language and concepts that make him memorable, imo. The characters are pretty flimsy and interchangeable.

 

[WashYourHands]

Utter strangeness of his worlds, def a trauma dissociation type, possible early abuse but shooting someone in the head will fuck anyone up on key psychological levels

Cutting up trauma and representing it as part of Control is as profound as cutting up text if you see it as self treatment/healing. I know the Ugly Spirit is a tangent but its scope is pure malevolence

 

[luka]

i always think of Mr Bradely-Mr Martin when i see Tea-Biscuits.
a kind of symbiote, two necks emerging from the same grey suit.

 

[Mr. Tea]

This Henry Kuttner guy was a Lovecraft disciple too apparently, which really ties in with all these monstrous alien characters you get in the nova trilogy. Quite intrigued to read him

There's a direct link between HPL and WSB in the form of Robert H. Barlow, who was Lovecraft's literary executor and later became an anthropologist specializing in the Mayan civilization. He taught Burroughs the Mayan language at Mexico City College. He was also gay, and killed himself when a student blackmailed him over it.