The House of Rumour (42 page)

In 2000,
Fugitive Alien
was remade by Multiversal Studios with British singer Danny Osiris in the role of Zoltar the extraterrestrial.

The House of God
was published in September 2001 and caused a certain amount of controversy at the time. Its cover depicted an image of a falling tower from the Tarot, and a central event in the book is the destruction of a skyscraper by a fanatical religious sect. It was inevitable that people would draw parallels with the events of September 11. But, as Larry would later explain, that wasn’t what got him into trouble.

I was very clear in interviews that it certainly wasn’t meant as any kind of prediction. The House of God is an alternative name for the Tower in the Tarot but the cover image was unfortunate. I’d actually intended that an image from the Minchiate deck be used, which depicts Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, as the book had a strong post-utopian theme. But instead we had the falling tower and, yes, there is a nod in the novel to the Tower of Babel story where a monolithic culture collapses into chaos. But there it was, that ill-omened card turning up once more. I pointed out that in Thomas Pynchon’s
Gravity’s Rainbow
the Tower becomes the rocket, the V2, the avenging missile. It represents catastrophe, and I’ve had my share of that. Susan Sontag said that science fiction stories are ‘not about science. They are about disaster which is one of the oldest subjects of art.’15 Interestingly the word disaster comes from the Italian
disastro
, meaning the unfavourable aspect of a star or planet. And I would have been fine continuing to intellectualise about the ‘aesthetics of destruction’ like this but instead I went on to make an unintentionally provocative comment. All I’d meant to say was that the attack on the World Trade Center was a ‘science fiction moment’ but then I added that ‘some disaffected people would see it as Luke Skywalker blowing up the Death Star’. And a great many took offence at that, mostly
Star Wars
fans.16

A volume of autobiography,
Leaving the Twentieth Century
, was published in 2002. Zagorski has sometimes insisted that
The House of God
is to be his last work of fiction, though he has also given enigmatic hints of a novel in progress. ‘A great unfinished work,’ he told a journalist in 2006, ‘that will remain unfinished.’ Pressed as to whether this was a comment on his life, he said: ‘Oh no, I’m still writing, still speculating. But I’m just a contributor, you know, just one of the voices.’

The span of his career has seen SF go from being about the probable, the possible, the impossible, the metaphysical to the ordinary, the everyday. It seems the one form that can truly grasp the essential strangeness of modern living, the cognitive dissonance that seems all-pervasive. ‘Perhaps one can use the narrative projections of SF to reverse-engineer a sense of reality into contemporary culture,’ says Zagorski. ‘I think it was William Gibson who said that SF is set now to become an essential component of naturalism in fiction.’ Now more than ever, Zagorski’s writing deserves to be rediscovered and re-evaluated, though he remains phlegmatic about his position in American literature. ‘Almost all my work is now out of print. I’m unlikely ever to be taught in schools or studied in universities. But I’m out there where I belong. In thrift stores and yard sales, in battered paperback editions with lurid covers and yellowing pages. Part of that story told by the lost and forgotten, the cheap pulps, the junk masterpieces.’

NOTES

1. Larry Zagorski,
Leaving the Twentieth Century
(2002), p. 4.

2. Ibid., p. 9.

3. The end of the ‘Golden Age’ of SF is usually seen as the mid to late 1950s when there was a rapid contraction of the inflated pulp market. Various critics have commented that the ‘Golden Age of SF is twelve’ in the harsh judgement that the genre forever belongs to early adolescence.

4. Jorge Luis Borges,
Other Inquisitions 1937–1952
(1964), p. 86.

5. Brian Aldiss, ‘Judgement at Jonbar’,
SF Horizons
magazine (1964).

6. Nemo Carvajal, introduction to
Post-Utopian SF
(1998).

7. Mary-Lou Gunderson,
Small Screen Memories
(2000), p. 34.

8. In the film, an air force officer of unspecified rank mentions ‘the Magenta Memorandum’, explaining it as a ‘top-secret document on these flying saucers’. This is thought by some to be a reference to a highly confidential briefing in 1948 by CIA director Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter to President Harry S. Truman, concerning ‘Operation Magenta’ – a top-level investigation into UFO activity that is said to have uncovered evidence of actual human contact with extraterrestrials. An FBI investigation of copies of this alleged document concluded that they were forgeries, pointing out formatting errors and false chronologies.

9.
Leaving the Twentieth Century
, p. 114.

10. Wanda Ferris, interview with the author, June 2010.

11.
Leaving the Twentieth Century
, p. 196.

12.
Small Screen Memories
, p. 301.

13.
Leaving the Twentieth Century
, p. 234.

14. Larry Zagorski, introduction to
Beach 16
by Nemo Carvajal (1996).

15. Susan Sontag, ‘The Imagination of Disaster’, in
Against Interpretation
(1966), p. 216.

16.
Leaving the Twentieth Century
, p. 301.

17

the star

Danny Osiris was finding it hard to sleep. It was the Adderall, of course. He had upped the dose just when he was supposed to be cutting down. He went up on the terrace and watched the dawn break over the valley. Venus burnt low in the sky to the east. Danny’s mind buzzed with flashes of pure knowledge, epiphanies. He was thinking so clearly now but in ways that he could scarcely articulate or express to others. His speech slurred in demented aphasia. Even the voice in his head seemed disconnected, sampled song lyrics re-edited in his mind.
There’s a starman, over the rainbow
. The sun just below the horizon, tinting the edge of the sky. Red diffused into turquoise like blood in a swimming pool. The bright planet began to fade.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer son of the morning
.

He shook out a couple of blue and white capsules into his palm, with
ADDERALL XR
15mg engraved on each. Thirty milligrams in an extended-release delivery system. He swallowed them. Chased them with the bottle of Evian he had brought out with him.
Somewhere, waiting in the sky
. He lit a Marlboro Light and looked across the canyons at the city beneath him. The reward system in his brain was firing up, a dopamine release in his mesolimbic pathway. As above, so below. Something hovered over Westwood, a red light pulsing. A helicopter, probably.
There’s a starman. Somewhere
.

Danny was scared. He was convinced that the Church was out to get him. They didn’t like it when somebody tried to leave. And an old friend had warned him that there was a journalist out there snooping around the Vita Lampada case. Johnny had phoned him. Johnny who used to be Jenny. Lucky creature, thought Danny, to be able to escape the self like that. Danny felt trapped. A man trapped in a man’s body.

He still had the manuscript Vita had given Jenny just before she was found dead in her flat. Danny didn’t understand all of it but he knew it contained official secrets about Rudolf Hess. He had known Vita from the New Romantic scene; she was a hustler and something of a con artist but very entertaining. It was Vita who had turned Danny on to science fiction. He remembered her talking about alien abduction, saying: ‘Doesn’t everybody just want to be taken away to another planet?’ Danny had agreed. We all want to escape. Maybe Vita was a little crazy. She had been seeing a shrink as part of her gender-reassignment process and said the psychiatrist’s definition of transsexuality was ‘gender dysphoria’. Funny word, dysphoria, thought Danny: the opposite of euphoria, he supposed. Just like dystopia is the opposite of utopia.

Well, Vita had finally escaped the self all right. Most people now thought that it was suicide, that she just made her death look mysterious. The last great trick she played on everyone. But Danny couldn’t be sure. He had to hide the manuscript properly this time, without it being traced to him. He would find a place for it so that even Johnny wouldn’t know where it was.

Arthur arrived at eight. He wore a Blonde Ambition black satin tour jacket, white T-shirt, black 501s, black Nike Air trainers. Stocky build, jet-black hair close cropped, Navajo features. Arthur was his bodyguard, his chauffeur, his personal trainer.

‘Morning, boss,’ he greeted Danny. ‘You wanna work out?’

‘Uhn . . . hi . . . is, er, Lorry? Is Lorry with you?’

‘Lorraine’s coming at nine, boss. So we’ve got time. What do you say?’

‘What?’

‘A quick workout. We could do the White Crane Chi Gong. Get you centred.’

‘Uhn . . . no. I . . .’

Danny shrugged. He saw the concern on Arthur’s face and he wanted to explain that everything was all right but he could not form any kind of coherent sentence. He tried a smile but suspected that just made him look more wasted.

‘At least have some breakfast, boss.’

‘Uhn . . . sure.’

In the kitchen Juanita had laid out an array of fresh fruit. Danny picked out a mango, two bananas, a pear and three oranges. He gestured to Juanita.

‘En la licuadora . . . por . . .’

Juanita smiled and nodded. She peeled the bananas and put them in the liquidiser.

He took the glass of juice and wandered out into the front garden. He looked up and saw a figure standing in his driveway. A man in a grey suit. He turned back to the house.

‘Arthur,’ he tried to shout but his voice was a feeble croak.

He looked back at the driveway. The man in the grey suit had disappeared.

Lorraine arrived at nine. His manager wore a Helmut Lang suit in light gunmetal, a Bikini Kill T-shirt, black slip-on loafers. Her hair teased out in a shock, her face more made-up than usual. Danny noticed dark rings under her eyes.

‘Uhn . . . are you . . . okay?’

‘I’m fine, Danny. Just, you know—’

‘Working too hard?’

‘No, no, I’m loving the job, I really am. Playtime’s been a little crazy, that’s all. But good news. I think I’ve found the lawyer that can get you out of your recording deal. Name’s Paul Moss. He’s going to argue that you didn’t have full and proper legal advice when you renegotiated back in ’ninety-one, that you didn’t enter into the contract knowingly.’

‘That’s . . . good.’

‘And that they were negligent in promoting your last album. They just don’t understand the new direction.’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘So, shall I set up a meeting?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right. Item two: the film project. Are you sure this is the right part for you?’

‘Uhn . . . yeah.’

‘But you’d be playing a fucking alien, for Christ’s sake. Won’t that mean make-up and latex shit all over your face?’

‘Uhn . . . no . . . it’s not going to be like that.’

‘Okay. I’ll have another look at the script. You’ve got that writer coming over at four, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Now, Danny, I don’t understand. I checked with the production company and this guy isn’t even attached to the project.’

‘He wrote the . . . uhn . . .’

‘He wrote the screenplay for the original. That was back in the 1950s. He’s not doing the remake.’

‘I like his work.’

‘Okay. But, look, Danny, if they do offer you the part, the insurers will want you to have a medical.’

‘Uhn . . .’

‘You sure you’re up to that right now? I mean, you’re coming through a difficult period, making a break with the past. Maybe now’s not the time to have too much stress in your life.’