The following posts include (1) "footnotes" for The Doris Piserchia Website (link at left), (2) texts-in-process that will eventually appear there, (3) texts from other websites, and (we hope) (4) stimulating discussion threads. The picture to the left is the back cover of The Spinner (book club edition), depicting a citizen of Eastland "hanging out" while Ekler the cop and Rune the idiot-superman look on.
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Science Fiction?
Before I get to DP's short stories I wanted to say a few things on the subject of genre. Bruce
Sterling came up with the term "slipstream" to describe
books that aren't precisely mainstream literature but
aren't science fiction either. I believe he wants his
own writing to escape the taint that sf has acquired
because of its awful marketing conventions (Buck Rogers
and “peeled eyeball” covers) and popular perception
as a domain of geeky, fan-fiction-writing amateurs.
Knowing what the field has to offer, when I hear my
literature-reading friends say "I don't read science fiction," I get
steamed. On the one hand, it's hard to defend a genre that
looks so juvenile, but on the other, you have to wonder if they've ever read Burroughs or Pynchon or Orwell. DP's novels were
all originally published within the sf field, where
they no doubt baffled many an adolescent boy, and I
sometimes fantasize about how they might be marketed the
second time around. I imagine sleek covers with muted
computer graphics and jacket copy describing DP as "a
literary dimension-hopper, blinking from one set of
genre conventions to another in relentless,
techno-pastoral-visionary narratives." Is that farfetched? Look at what she's written: a metaphysical detective story (Mister
Justice), Night of the Living Dead- style horror (The
Spinner), a proto-cyberpunk, Taylorist nightmare (I,
Zombie), books set in the future that read like ancient
mythology (Doomtime, Earthchild), and an Appalachian
vampire yarn (Blood County)!! If Jack Womack and J. G.
Ballard can be discreetly moved over to the "fiction"
section at your local bookstore, why not this writer?