- Boy, I will not have you reading pornography in my classroom. Is that understood?- But sir -- Is that understood?- But, sir, it's not pornography. It's not. It really isn't!- I am interested to hear, boy, that accounts of underage girls having sexual intercourse with dogs are not -- But sir. Sir. You know how you're always telling us not to take things out of context?- Ah, yes, I have probably said that a few times.- Well sir, that's just what you're doing now sir. It's not pornographic. It's about the search for enlightenment. And the nature of reality.- Am I to understand, then, that passages about women having their breasts whipped with thorny bouquets of roses are actually about the search for enlightenment?- Well sir, I know it doesn't sound like that sir, but taken in context it is. Sex is just another way to try and reach enlightenment. And it all happens in her imagination sir. She's really a brain in a vat and she's trying to get back into contact with reality.- Boy, excuse me for asking the question, but are your sexual insights based on theory or practice?- Ah, so far mostly theory. But this book made me think a lot. Sir. - You are putting up a spirited defence, boy. You may yet escape without receiving the detention you so richly deserve.- Thank you sir. It's really about how perception is more than just a flow of neural impulses sir. Sex is about reconnecting with your body and experiencing the real world. A brain in a vat is missing something essential. It's a metaphor for what's wrong with modern society sir. - Boy, have you been reading E.M. Forster?- No sir.- Hermann Hesse?- No sir.- Daniel Dennett?- No sir. Just William Hjortsberg sir. And Commander Pants.- Well boy, you may occasionally want to read something that isn't trash science-fiction.- Yes sir. Though it's actually quite well written. You can borrow it if you like sir. - Really?- Yes sir. As long as you give it back. My friend wants to read it. Sir.- Hm. Well, I may accept your gracious offer. Thank you.- Sir? - Boy, I have told you before not to interrupt me. Ah, I see what you mean about brains in vats.- Sir, about my detention -- Boy, never mind about that. You've got away with it again. Dismissed!
Imagine you're at an open mic night at a comedy club. The schedule is full of comedians, like yourself, who are putting in their dues, running through prepared acts, testing out what works and what doesn't. They're working on their craft, it's an industry they're all immersed in. Suddenly, from a table of drunks nobody has seen before, one guy swaggers up to the microphone and starts belching words about anal beads. His friends laugh louder than they have at anything else in the night, and he finishes his impromptu set and stumbles back to his group, proud of himself. You grit your teeth and go up next and do your act, it goes down well, and you find a table. Later, the drunk finds you and asks you how his set went and wasn't that shit so easy.William Hjortsberg opens up his book with an introduction he wrote, that talks about his background in literary theory, and how reviews for Gray Matters say "oh no, he's committed science fiction." He's the drunk in the comedy bar; he's the nerd pretending to throw a football at a team practice. He wrote science fiction because he thought it would be funny, but never actually tells a joke. This is a book of half-baked ideas just sort of slurrying around a disjointed narrative, with vaguely scifi words thrown in to really lay it in that he's writing science fiction. This book would not get published today.I don't even know how to take this review seriously. A bunch of fairly shitty brains in jars, and then not brains in jars just because, do things for a bit. There's robots, because. It's a hundred and sixty pages that took me four days to read. I'm done with giving Hjortsberg any more of my time.
What do You think about Gray Matters (1971)?
An interesting take on a possible future human society, where by the 25th century the human body is considered superfluous and obsolete. Humans' physical existence is reduced to the preservation of the brain alone, or Cerebromorphs, stored in rows and stratified floors in a Depository, tended by machines whilst they work towards personal enlightenment with the assistance of "adjudicators".The story follows three such inhabitants, all rebellious to the regime in their own way. But as much as they grow disatisfied with their post-physical world of taped sensations (very prescient of virtual reality) would they be able to find fulfillment if they could house their brains in a body again, instead of a computer?Although a novel concept with some disturbing and humourous ideas (many Cerebrmorphs like to spend their time watching the machines go about the drudgery of their daily tasks through a visual window, replicating their old lives as couch potatoes in the most banal fashion) the book would have benefitted by fuller development and less sexual maliciousness, so common to many of the science fiction writers of the time (Larry Niven, Bob Shaw, Silverberg etc).There is some fun to be had at the usual inaccuracies in science fiction stories written so soon after the moon landing and during the Cold War, when the far future seemed just around the corner, but the defects noted above, as well as a flatness to the prose throughout, condemns this novel to the status of largely unsatisfactory period piece.
—Perry Whitford
Comparable to Rudy Rucker's ware tetralogy in genre (more human immortality through brains in jars/ people blending into machine conciousness), this postulates a sort of brain in jar police state, where people are forced onto a path towards buddhist enlightenment. If they ever achieve it, they get decanted into real bodies, where they live a sort of possessionless primitivist existence until they die. Not a lot of compelling characters or plotting to carry the freight of the ideas, this went out of print ages back, and I picked it up used somewhere.
—Tim Wake
