G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
Beyond Apollo, Herovit's World, and The Gamesman are highly recommended.
Clown Passage of the Day
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G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"Nobody any longer blamed Mankind for global terrorism, as Nature itself had become the prime suspect, Nature having created Mankind in the first place. Murders and mutilations were simply sideshows and anybody arrested were not arrested for these crimes themselves but for being clowns of a deeper motive that Nature had got jerking like puppets in its cause. Just a means for cosmic slimming. To chill the buds of global warming. Double bluffs, if not triple."
D. F. Lewis - "The Apocryfan"
gveranon
Grimscribe
I would recommend his early story collections, but it's possible that some of the same stories are reprinted in Malzberg At Large (which I haven't seen).
I second GSC's recommendation of Beyond Apollo, which was quite notorious when it was published. It made Malzberg a lot of enemies because it entirely went against the can-do, optimistic spirit of good old "Space Age" science fiction.
The Passage of the Light: The Recursive Science Fiction of Barry N. Malzberg is a collection of his sardonic and often bitter metafiction. This collection contains the entire novels Gather in the Hall of the Planets and Herovit's World. It also contains the novelette "A Galaxy Called Rome," which is one of the best things he ever wrote. (As a side note, "A Galaxy Called Rome" was the basis for his metafictional novel Galaxies.)
In the Stone House is a strong collection of more recent stories. The Remaking of Sigmund Freud, his last and longest novel (published more than twenty years ago), is also very good. Breakfast in the Ruins is a collection of essays about the science fiction field and the commercial failure of his writing career.
It's astonishing to me that he wrote so well at high speed. In a 1979 interview with Charles Platt, he said that in 1973 he wrote sixteen novels, thirty short stories, and a poem. (That poem must have been a back-breaker!)
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
Viva June, what hasn't been mentioned is that some of Barry N. Malzberg's first published works were written under the pseudonym of K. M. O'Donnell. I have three Ace Doubles featuring "O'Donnell": Final War and Other Fantasies (1969), Dwellers of the Deep (1970), and Gather in the Hall of Planets/In the Pocket and Other S-F Stories (1971). "O'Donnell" also wrote The Empty People and the fix-up novel Universe Day.
Recommended early collections by Malzberg himself are The Many Worlds of Barry Malzberg (1975) and The Best of Barry N. Malzberg (1976). I suggest seeking out The Passage of the Light without reservation. Mr. Malzberg's take on recursive science fiction (science fiction about science fiction) is original, usually scathing, and occasionally humorous in a very dark way.
Malzberg, not unlike J. G. Ballard, became obsessed with assassination themes after November 22, 1963. Two novels of note are The Destruction of the Temple (1974) and Scop (1976).
Enough recommendations to start with. I could make many more. And then there is the vast body of uncollected short fiction, too!
Viva June, you used the phrase "schizophrenic scherzos" to describe Barry N. Malzberg's writing. "Exhilarating madness" works for me.
Recommended early collections by Malzberg himself are The Many Worlds of Barry Malzberg (1975) and The Best of Barry N. Malzberg (1976). I suggest seeking out The Passage of the Light without reservation. Mr. Malzberg's take on recursive science fiction (science fiction about science fiction) is original, usually scathing, and occasionally humorous in a very dark way.
Malzberg, not unlike J. G. Ballard, became obsessed with assassination themes after November 22, 1963. Two novels of note are The Destruction of the Temple (1974) and Scop (1976).
Enough recommendations to start with. I could make many more. And then there is the vast body of uncollected short fiction, too!
Viva June, you used the phrase "schizophrenic scherzos" to describe Barry N. Malzberg's writing. "Exhilarating madness" works for me.
Viva June
Mystic
Thank you, G. and G. S. The Passage of the Light has been added to my to-buy list.
Edit: I found Scop at the library and read it through in one sitting the very same evening without ever fully understanding all the subtleties of the plot and sometimes not even the basic intrigue partly because for some reason Malzberg or his editor or possibly both are just not very keen on proofreading and punctuation but mostly because the book is a mess to be frank, although very endearing, and we all know that a charming mess is worth more than a bland success.
Edit: I found Scop at the library and read it through in one sitting the very same evening without ever fully understanding all the subtleties of the plot and sometimes not even the basic intrigue partly because for some reason Malzberg or his editor or possibly both are just not very keen on proofreading and punctuation but mostly because the book is a mess to be frank, although very endearing, and we all know that a charming mess is worth more than a bland success.
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G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"Barroli feared that Tomsk was reaching beyond the Golden Mean of a clown's senility. He saw it in Tomsk's eyes, those pinpricks of life which the encircling audience, on curves of exponential delight, were too far away to see properly. Tomsk's eyes already looked as if they were nipples upon the sagging breasts of his facial muscles. But now the whites were blackening whilst the pupils became more an emptiness than a colour. The subtle mascara of Tomsk's seniority merely accentuated such physical quirks rather than alleviating them.
Barroli ceased scrutinising Tomsk so as to look into the mirror at the round blotched canvas of another face: his own.
He, too, had darkened his eye-liner to suit his own advancing years. Yet, unlike Tomsk, the bulbous nose was something that became increasingly unbearable to wear. It did nothing for his self respect. Soon, he would be too old to take over from Tomsk...
There was a rap on the dressing-room door which indicated the imminent call to duty. From the distance, both clowns could hear the ensemble drawing to the brassy finale of the elephant's cake-walk - amid the officious shouts of the ring-master. Tadman was a blighter. He had no finer feelings for clownship. He merely endured their buffoonery, for the sake of the unbearable littl'uns in the front row of the audience.
Tadman thought circuses were all about animal acts and trapeze tricks. Clowns, to him, were not even light relief. As Tomsk once said, in one of his more lucid moments, a clown's rightful purpose was really for dark relief - but, surely, one couldn't expect anyone like ring-master Tadman to appreciate the arcane arts of mockery and mummery.
The rap repeated itself. Same rap, different knuckles..."
Barroli ceased scrutinising Tomsk so as to look into the mirror at the round blotched canvas of another face: his own.
He, too, had darkened his eye-liner to suit his own advancing years. Yet, unlike Tomsk, the bulbous nose was something that became increasingly unbearable to wear. It did nothing for his self respect. Soon, he would be too old to take over from Tomsk...
There was a rap on the dressing-room door which indicated the imminent call to duty. From the distance, both clowns could hear the ensemble drawing to the brassy finale of the elephant's cake-walk - amid the officious shouts of the ring-master. Tadman was a blighter. He had no finer feelings for clownship. He merely endured their buffoonery, for the sake of the unbearable littl'uns in the front row of the audience.
Tadman thought circuses were all about animal acts and trapeze tricks. Clowns, to him, were not even light relief. As Tomsk once said, in one of his more lucid moments, a clown's rightful purpose was really for dark relief - but, surely, one couldn't expect anyone like ring-master Tadman to appreciate the arcane arts of mockery and mummery.
The rap repeated itself. Same rap, different knuckles..."
D. F. Lewis - "The Maze Zone"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"He saw the Circus Tent bedecked like a girl’s dress, with ribbons and frills. A towering thing that, one wondered, must have been more obvious from the other side of the lake than it actually had been. Someone (a clown, I think) lifted the hem-line for him to enter the dark interior. By this time, Freda had absconded with other children, though from their elvish mien he did speculate whether they would enjoy this human extravaganza as much as a human. Still, it would do Freda a world of good to be reminded of whence she came. He did not begrudge her the company of her peers. He would simply clap his hands more slowly and smile less broadly when the clowns did their antics and the elephants their ostrich-walk. Monkeys played mum, but he suspected them in perpetual coitus interruptus with their tiny hearts on a static blink. The pigs that sprayed sparks from their snouts were a wonder to behold and he had to narrow his smile purposively to re-establish his grown-up credentials. The grand climax - after the ringmaster had stuffed a live pigeon with its own young amid the squawks of stub-winged rooks that circled above amid the trapezists - was the shafting spotlights being played further into the depths of the Big Top than had been previously needed even to illuminate the shimmery butterfly ballerinas, creatures that gently kissed the floral sides of the mock sky in their wispy flights of fancy."
D. F. Lewis and Tim Lebbon - "Wasted Meals"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"Only Messrs Bermuda and Superbus usually have the width needed to get out for breathers. They go to the pier, they say, to play on the Amusements, gawping from side to side like the clowns' heads whose yawning mouths we once aimed balls into for cheap prizes."
D. F. Lewis - "The House of Mr. Moses"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
I'm curious, Viva June. Was the copy of Scop that you read translated from the original English? If so, I suspect that may be the problem. My copy which was published by Pyramid Books in April 1976 seems to be just fine...
gveranon
Grimscribe
Viva June, I own a copy of Scop, but I've only glanced at it, haven't read it. I do remember Malzberg stating somewhere (in an interview or essay) that stylistically Scop was written as a pastiche of Alfred Bester. Malzberg has expressed admiration for Bester's classic stories and novels from the '50s. I suppose this pastiching -- Malzberg-doing-Bester -- might be part of why you found Scop to be inscrutable.
Other than that possibility -- yeah, I'd agree that some of Malzberg's stuff is a mess, and some of it is slight and minor. During his period of high productivity in the '70s, he wrote very, very fast, and sometimes it shows. But despite this, it's the over-the-top writings from the '70s that I like the best. Even the flawed and minor stuff -- and even the pastiches -- are written in a way that's Malzbergian to the point of self-parody. Manic, hyper-literate, psychologically stressed, darkly hilarious. I love it. I'm not trying to evangelize for Malzberg's work; it's definitely a minority taste, and the quality does vary. If you find yourself saying, "What is this shit?" you wouldn't be the first.
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G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
Indeed. Scop features the following epigraph:
"There must be more to life than just living."
Gully Foyle
The Stars My Destination: Alfred Bester
Viva June
Mystic
My failure to fully comprehend Scop probably stems from reading it too quickly—and like I said, even if it is flawed it is still an interesting piece of writing. As for typos and spurious copyediting, On a Planet Alien is much worse than Scop. Someone ought to do a definitive edition of Malzberg's works and give them the attention they deserve.
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"Years before, he had come out into the garden, expecting the sunshine to jolly him up with its contrast to the gloomy parlour—the birdsong airiness, the perfectly green lawn, the clean-living sheets gently sailing upon the washing-line, the near unbroken ceiling of blue sparsely sown with tufts of angel's breath. Then, the sudden spluttering into life of a lawn-mower ... curse it, this country could not boast of many such peaceful days, and one of Eric's clownish neighbours had decided to crop his grass-blades. Eric mentally threatened to go round and barber the clown's green fingers for him. Indeed, Eric had escaped outside, there being a decided atmosphere within the house..."
D. F. Lewis - "Widow's Weeds"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"As she turned away from the sink her old slippers caught on the curled-up edge of the carpet she always kept in front of the sink.
As Judy fell it seemed, to her, to take forever. She had time to realise that if she used her hands to cushion her fall then the damage to her wrist might be very complicated indeed so she turned, legs twisted, to take the brunt of her fall on her well padded bottom, careful to keep her hands away from the floor and the can of beans towards the ceiling.
Her head thumped the floor with just enough force to rebound upwards in time to meet the can of beans, now upside down, in its downward flight. Beans, in tomato sauce of course, cascaded over her head, into her eyes, mouth, cleavage, hair – everywhere. The jagged, serrated lid was still attached because, with here earlier injury, she had not been able to quite complete the 360 degrees needed to separate it, and this sharp edge just caught her cheek a glancing blow.
Without the weight of beans behind it, the tin only just sliced her cheek – enough to cut, enough to bleed, enough to upset her, but not enough to cause any real damage. Make-up would easily disguise it.
She sat up on the kitchen floor, looked around her at the mess and promptly burst into tears. They ran down her face, leaving trails of clean skin in a tomato-juice visage. Like a circus clown or tragi-comic actor."
As Judy fell it seemed, to her, to take forever. She had time to realise that if she used her hands to cushion her fall then the damage to her wrist might be very complicated indeed so she turned, legs twisted, to take the brunt of her fall on her well padded bottom, careful to keep her hands away from the floor and the can of beans towards the ceiling.
Her head thumped the floor with just enough force to rebound upwards in time to meet the can of beans, now upside down, in its downward flight. Beans, in tomato sauce of course, cascaded over her head, into her eyes, mouth, cleavage, hair – everywhere. The jagged, serrated lid was still attached because, with here earlier injury, she had not been able to quite complete the 360 degrees needed to separate it, and this sharp edge just caught her cheek a glancing blow.
Without the weight of beans behind it, the tin only just sliced her cheek – enough to cut, enough to bleed, enough to upset her, but not enough to cause any real damage. Make-up would easily disguise it.
She sat up on the kitchen floor, looked around her at the mess and promptly burst into tears. They ran down her face, leaving trails of clean skin in a tomato-juice visage. Like a circus clown or tragi-comic actor."
The Clacton Writers' Group - "Fit, Fat & Forty"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
Chaos snatched me up and, before I could gather my bearings, dropped me amid a romance, a family row and, worst of all, a life I had been trying to avoid at all costs. I yearned for the return of that state of pre-embodiment with which many were satisfied for as long as eternity took. She welcomed me into the man’s body with a gentle squeeze of the hand, followed by a light kiss on the cheek. It was an instinctive reaction on her part, since she was unaware that I had not been possessor of her sweetheart’s body for as long as she had known it. Reluctant souls, like me, torn screaming from the substitute-bench of Fate are bound to provide a seamless transfer of responsibilities for those involved with the emotions of the receiving body. I thus returned the kiss. Surrogates of all shapes and sizes gathered around. These were, on a superficial level, relatives of the woman, who had arrived for our engagement party. However, I knew most of them as others of my kind. The individual, whose disguise as my future mother-in-law was wearing thin, winked an involuntary twitch of the cheek-muscles, perhaps, but one I took to be a romantic enticement to another actor such as me in a theatre called reality. Here, then, I had been landed with two romances: one dictated by the logic of a pair of human-beings ineluctably intended to be in love both mind and body - and the other romance generated in the shape of the foul old winking bird who was being surreptitiously spiritual behind the wrinkle-ringed eyes in her attempts to dupe Fate. I could not possibly reciprocate the latter, since the former was meant to be my whole preoccupation for the next few decades. Furthermore, the rest of the family members had begun arguing. They were picking at the carcass of a roast chicken, one that some had intended to save for tomorrow’s dinner, others to consume now at the party. It was a trivial row, yet with a high significance derived from the objective viewpoint of timescales far in excess of human comprehension — simply an extrapolation, a spoiling tactic, a diversion, a decoy, a wild goose chase of small talk since wild chickens were indeed rare. Ill-cooked, in any event - and I hoped that food-poisoning would rectify the few flinches from Fate now being rehearsed by such rogue spawndrift of Chaos. However, I suffered the abrupt realisation that I had not given my sweetheart an engagement ring. It was evidently expected of me, the climax of current proceedings, one that my predecessors had forgotten, either through the typical inefficiency of deputy souls who have no material or spiritual incentive to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s — or, more likely, sheer bloody-mindedness. More likely, of course, because, when minds bled, realignments inevitably ensued. And I ripped out the red-dripping wishbone and raised it like Yorick towards my smiling lips...
D. F. Lewis - "Yorick"
yellowish haze
Grimscribe
"Gilman swallowed a mouthful of his third double whisky and soda and ran his hand across his mouth. In his other hand the fountain pen he wielded fairly raced across the pages of his notebook. He wrote of the city as a gigantic and tattered circus tent filled with acts that terrified the bedraggled audience: insanity, suicides, car crashes, stabbings, shootings, drug overdoses, heart attacks, and disease. Grinning, decayed clowns hauled their unwilling victims from the audience and danced them around the ring until their role in the mummery was over and they perished. And as the show went on more and more customers rolled up from the outside to take the place of those who were gone. Laughter turned into screams."
-- The Face of Twilight by Mark Samuels
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
(Many, many thanks to W. H. Pugmire for steering me in the direction of the following excerpt.)
"Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o'clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment's notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob."
"Everything about my tragedy has been hideous, mean, repellent, lacking in style; our very dress makes us grotesque. We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken. We are specially designed to appeal to the sense of humour. On November 13th, 1895, I was brought down here from London. From two o'clock till half-past two on that day I had to stand on the centre platform of Clapham Junction in convict dress, and handcuffed, for the world to look at. I had been taken out of the hospital ward without a moment's notice being given to me. Of all possible objects I was the most grotesque. When people saw me they laughed. Each train as it came up swelled the audience. Nothing could exceed their amusement. That was, of course, before they knew who I was. As soon as they had been informed they laughed still more. For half an hour I stood there in the grey November rain surrounded by a jeering mob."
Oscar Wilde - "De Profundis"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"'Come lie with me, ma chère.'
Your voice is cracked, like unto your countenance. I peer into the coffin and see the things that lie beside you, the wooden mallet and the mask.
'Does it call to you, my love?' you whisper. 'Does its sleek handle ache to feel your fingers' clasp? With it smoothly in your hand, we can forget today's psychodrama. Great Jesu! What a clown you were today, trying to dance before the ones who gawked and tossed their pittance into your cap. How clumsy you were, mon chère, and how heavily you capsized. They must have thought, judging from their expressions, that you had been imbibing. Thus in disgust they parted, and we are very poor.'
I observe your nude wooden torso, badly chipped. I see the rusty joints with which your dainty arms are fastened to your shoulders. I see your pantaloons, the battered slippers that cover wooden feet. I try not to see your face, but how can I withstand its lure? Especially when you whisper my name so seductively.
'Ah, my crippled one,' you sigh, in a voice that mocks my own. 'You look into my eyes at last. Yes, that one on the left is newly cracked. Do you not remember? Last night when we were dancing in this dusky room. Do you remember how you fell, and how I chuckled? I could not help myself, you looked such a buffoon. Can you not recall how you cursed me, how you found the happy mallet and smashed my face? Oh, what a feeling for you, what a sensation. Violence is so intoxicating. Yes, I sighed when the hammer smashed into me. Your blow was so passionate! But you know this, do you not, ma chère?'
I reach into your box of woe and pick up the heavy wooden mask, that badly battered thing that closely resembles your comical countenance. I turn it over and see that the ruddy stains have dried. How smoothly it fits over my face. I fasten the strap that holds the mask in place. I dip my hand into your bed and take up the mallet. Precariously balancing on the stumps that are remnants of lost limbs, I hold the happy hammer before our face. How excitedly we sigh, mon chère, as I smash that implement into our puppet physiognomy."
Your voice is cracked, like unto your countenance. I peer into the coffin and see the things that lie beside you, the wooden mallet and the mask.
'Does it call to you, my love?' you whisper. 'Does its sleek handle ache to feel your fingers' clasp? With it smoothly in your hand, we can forget today's psychodrama. Great Jesu! What a clown you were today, trying to dance before the ones who gawked and tossed their pittance into your cap. How clumsy you were, mon chère, and how heavily you capsized. They must have thought, judging from their expressions, that you had been imbibing. Thus in disgust they parted, and we are very poor.'
I observe your nude wooden torso, badly chipped. I see the rusty joints with which your dainty arms are fastened to your shoulders. I see your pantaloons, the battered slippers that cover wooden feet. I try not to see your face, but how can I withstand its lure? Especially when you whisper my name so seductively.
'Ah, my crippled one,' you sigh, in a voice that mocks my own. 'You look into my eyes at last. Yes, that one on the left is newly cracked. Do you not remember? Last night when we were dancing in this dusky room. Do you remember how you fell, and how I chuckled? I could not help myself, you looked such a buffoon. Can you not recall how you cursed me, how you found the happy mallet and smashed my face? Oh, what a feeling for you, what a sensation. Violence is so intoxicating. Yes, I sighed when the hammer smashed into me. Your blow was so passionate! But you know this, do you not, ma chère?'
I reach into your box of woe and pick up the heavy wooden mask, that badly battered thing that closely resembles your comical countenance. I turn it over and see that the ruddy stains have dried. How smoothly it fits over my face. I fasten the strap that holds the mask in place. I dip my hand into your bed and take up the mallet. Precariously balancing on the stumps that are remnants of lost limbs, I hold the happy hammer before our face. How excitedly we sigh, mon chère, as I smash that implement into our puppet physiognomy."
W. H. Pugmire - "The Saprophytic Fungi"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"'So tell me. How did all this begin? How did it get organized? What's it all for?'
Keith started to answer, stopped, tried again: 'Uh. I don't think anybody can answer those questions. My old man used to talk a lot about the history of the Mummers. You can trace them back for centuries, back to colonial times when they were just random gangs of neighborhood men wandering around on the First, shooting off guns and raising hell. But you can't say when they became Mummers. They just kind of evolved.'
The Fancy club was less than a block away. A hundred fifty strong, they strutted in neatly ordered rank and file, their ostrich-plume headdresses bobbing, the feathered, mirrored, and bedangled 'capes' - more like false wings than capes, for they towered above the marchers and out to the sides - dipping to the odd cadence of the Mummer's strut. A lone Mummer strutted out front, his costume a larger, fancier version of the others'.
Fletch pointed at some black-clad men slipping through the crowd just ahead of the lead Mummer. 'What are they supposed to be doing?'
'Don't look! You're supposed to pretend you don't see them.'
She turned to face him. 'But who are they?'
'Men In Black. They're the spotters. They locate certain people and point them out to the King Clown for a tapping-out or - or whatever,' he finished lamely. At her questioning glance, he added, 'The King Clown is their captain, the one marching in front. King Clown used to be a type of costume, but there's just the one now.'
Except for the traditional facepaint, King Clown's costume was nothing like a real clown's. His cape was a full twelve feet high, fringed with white ostrich plumes, and glittering with sequins and mirror fragments and even a bit of diffraction grating, which must have come from somebody's grandmother's trunk. Two guylines led from the tips of the cape to his gloved hands, so he could manage the ungainly costume in the light breezes that sometimes blew up. Like his followers, we wore primarily scarlet and black, though there were a dozen clashing colors admixed. He strutted with great dignity, occasionally bowing slightly to each side in acknowledgment of the crowd's cheers."
Keith started to answer, stopped, tried again: 'Uh. I don't think anybody can answer those questions. My old man used to talk a lot about the history of the Mummers. You can trace them back for centuries, back to colonial times when they were just random gangs of neighborhood men wandering around on the First, shooting off guns and raising hell. But you can't say when they became Mummers. They just kind of evolved.'
The Fancy club was less than a block away. A hundred fifty strong, they strutted in neatly ordered rank and file, their ostrich-plume headdresses bobbing, the feathered, mirrored, and bedangled 'capes' - more like false wings than capes, for they towered above the marchers and out to the sides - dipping to the odd cadence of the Mummer's strut. A lone Mummer strutted out front, his costume a larger, fancier version of the others'.
Fletch pointed at some black-clad men slipping through the crowd just ahead of the lead Mummer. 'What are they supposed to be doing?'
'Don't look! You're supposed to pretend you don't see them.'
She turned to face him. 'But who are they?'
'Men In Black. They're the spotters. They locate certain people and point them out to the King Clown for a tapping-out or - or whatever,' he finished lamely. At her questioning glance, he added, 'The King Clown is their captain, the one marching in front. King Clown used to be a type of costume, but there's just the one now.'
Except for the traditional facepaint, King Clown's costume was nothing like a real clown's. His cape was a full twelve feet high, fringed with white ostrich plumes, and glittering with sequins and mirror fragments and even a bit of diffraction grating, which must have come from somebody's grandmother's trunk. Two guylines led from the tips of the cape to his gloved hands, so he could manage the ungainly costume in the light breezes that sometimes blew up. Like his followers, we wore primarily scarlet and black, though there were a dozen clashing colors admixed. He strutted with great dignity, occasionally bowing slightly to each side in acknowledgment of the crowd's cheers."
Michael Swanwick - In the Drift
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
"King Clown's troupe was parallel to them and marching past, when the gloved hand was again raised. They wheeled to face the crowd. King Clown strode through the spectators, straight at Keith and Fletch. Sweet Jesus, Keith prayed silently. Let it be somebody else.
The crowd parted and King Clown halted before Fletch, placed his hands on her shoulders. He waited a beat. Then he leaned down and kissed her gently on both cheeks. She smiled brightly at him, and dipped a curtsy. He turned as if to move away.
Then he whirled again, and before Keith could react, the gloved hands were on his shoulders, and he stared into the man's bloodshot eyes. Keith tried to jerk away, but several pairs of hands held him firm. He could see the weave of the Clown's costume, could smell the alcohol on his breath. The man's mouth was a thin line within his painted smile.
Slowly, very slowly, King Clown bent over and kissed his cheeks.
In an instant the restraining hands, Men In Black, King Clown, and all were gone. The band was Mummer-strutting away, playing Funeral March of a Marionette."
The crowd parted and King Clown halted before Fletch, placed his hands on her shoulders. He waited a beat. Then he leaned down and kissed her gently on both cheeks. She smiled brightly at him, and dipped a curtsy. He turned as if to move away.
Then he whirled again, and before Keith could react, the gloved hands were on his shoulders, and he stared into the man's bloodshot eyes. Keith tried to jerk away, but several pairs of hands held him firm. He could see the weave of the Clown's costume, could smell the alcohol on his breath. The man's mouth was a thin line within his painted smile.
Slowly, very slowly, King Clown bent over and kissed his cheeks.
In an instant the restraining hands, Men In Black, King Clown, and all were gone. The band was Mummer-strutting away, playing Funeral March of a Marionette."
Michael Swanwick - In the Drift
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