Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

Ive known the platonic, interactive online Paul Di Filippo since 1988, when he and I collaborated on a story, Instability, starring the canonical Beats in a contretemps with the atomic physicists Richard Feynman and John von Neumann. But I didnt actually meet the embodied, ebullient Paul until ten years later, when I managed to warp one of my periodic Manhattan writing-biz runs so as to include a stop in Providence, Rhode Island.

Paul showed me H. P. Lovecrafts grave, where I shed my raiment and embraced Lovecrafts headstone fully nude for good luck. My idea of good luck, anyhow. Or perhaps I only imagine that I did that. Ive been rather addled and befuddled for the last week, living as if in a waking dreamunder the sway of the slender, potent tome you hold before you, Wikiworld.

Providence is a tale of a burly, rowdy robot addicted to spiral, which is his name for old-time vinyl records. Wonderful word. This set-up allows Paul to indulge his devotion to Clio and Euterpe, muses of history and music. And, chimera that he is, Di Filippo casts the story into noir crime-fiction form. I was intrigued by a philosophical speculation in the story: we humans tend to be less excited about something if weve already heard or seen itbut for a robot with a perfect memory this drop-off might be total. Hear it once, get it down, dont need to hear it again. And thus a relentless craving for fresh spiral.

I mentioned that Di Filippos style is chimericalby this I mean that hes a Proteus, a cave of shifting winds, an SF Shakespeare, continually finding new voices for his tales. Yes We Have No Bananasmy fave in this volumefinds Di Fi in a Thomas Pynchon mode, and its a wonderful ride, bursting with witty wordplay, outr names, social satire, and delicious, historical arcana.

The hero likes to spend time checking his o-mail (not e-mail) in a bistro called The Happy Applet. The town where he lives is known for its ocarina players, and the ocarina is also known as a fipple flute, and, yes, thats actually a genuine and correct phrase. What a gift it is, to learn a thing like that.

And theres more. The characters are putting on a show involving the string-theory-related cosmological physics studied by Edward Witten, and two of the candidate titles are Ive Got the Worlds on a String and Witten It Be Nice? Some Good Sub-Planckian Vibrations. Subtle, heady stuff.

And theres a guest appearance by the Jazz Age Parisian dancer Josephine Baker. Go enjoy the whole thing at once.

The New Cyberiad is a Stanislaw Lem kind of tale, about two immense robots making a huge journey across space and time. Di Filippo shows staggering wit and sophistication in describing the tasks that the giant robots need to perform in order to construct their time machine. I cant resist quoting his list in extenso:

They had to burnish by hand millions of spiky crystals composed of frozen Planck-seconds. Hundreds of thousands of simultaneity nodes had to be filled with the purest molten paradoxium. A thousand gnomon-calibrators had to be synched. Hundreds of lightcones had to be focused on various event horizons. Dozens of calendrical packets had to be inserted between the yesterday, today and tomorrow shock absorbers. And at the centre of the whole mechanism a giant orrery replicating an entire quadrant of the universe had to be precisely set in place.

So awesome.

iCity is another stand-out story, with city planners redesigning already-occupied neighbourhoods on the fly. The semi-living material of the streets and buildings reconforms itself. Bombs Away! features airlifted biofab units shaped like portable toilets. Cockroach Love is indescribably loathsome, yet unspeakably toothsome. Argus Blinked turns the contemporary lifelogging trope on its head. Return to the 20th Century enters the pre-Golden-Age Buck Rogers zone.

The books title story, Wikiworld, revisits the geeky/hip Pynchonian mode, but with a first-person narrator who becomes the leader or jimmywhale of our nations wikis, including groups with wonderful names like the Roosevelvet Underground, the Satin Stalins, the Boss Hawgs, the Red Greens, the Harmbudsmen, the Gang of Four on the Floor, the Winston Smiths, and the Over-the-Churchills. Imagine the joy and craftsmanship that go into crafting a list like this. Art for arts sake.

One of the remarkable things about fantastic literature is the level of literary collaboration that it supports. In this respect, were like scientistsand like musicians. We conduct our thought experiments and we jam our power chords. Im proud to say that Wikiworld includes two of my collaborations with Paul Di Filippo. Paul is an extremely pleasant man to work withhes unfailingly gracious, wonderfully inventive, and an incredibly fast writer.

One thing I enjoy about collaborating is that, when all goes well, you develop a fusion style thats not quite the same as that of either of the individual authors. In part, what I do when I collaborate with Paul is to imitate his writing by using a rich vocabulary and crafting long, intricate sentences. Just like Im doing in this intro.

In closing, Ill add a few details about my two collaborative stories with Paul. One of the inspirations for our story To See Infinity Bare was the movie Amadeus, in which the elder composer Salieri resents the young genius Mozart. Another of this storys goals was to make actual infinities seem real. Paul thickened up the plot line with romantic betrayals, and added a rich texture to the musical scenes.

Regarding Fjaerland, a few years ago my wife and I took a memorable trip to Norway, riding a ferry up a fjord to the lovely little town of Fjaerlandwhich really exists. We disembarked from the boat on a quiet Sunday morning, and I immediately had the sense of having walked into an episode of The Twilight Zone. I decided to go with a Lovecraftian theme for this tale, but I couldnt quite get it going. And so I turned to the master, Paul Di Filippo, and he quickly added some subplots. But Im not quite sure where our supernatural eel came from. Some eldritch offspring of our merged ectoplasmic auras, I presume.

Paul Di Filippo is more than my collaborator. Being a writer is, by and large, a solitary life. It means facing a blank screen day after day, month after month, and every single day its impossible, but somehow we do it. When the aloneness grows too intense, you send an email to a friend. And Paul is the best of correspondents, ever sympathetic, alert, and understanding.

Thank you, Paul, and hats off. Another great book. Youre keeping the future gnarly, bro. Long may you wave.

Rudy Rucker, Los Gatos, California

The Big Tubes got fresh spiral, Reddy K.

Those words grabbed me by the co-ax. I had to try to sound blas, even though my LEDs were flickering already at the thought of sweet spiral. Analogue input! Raw kicks!

Oh yeah? Whats that to me?

Vend-o-mat spat a cellphone out of his chest and began playing a videogame on its screen. Robot Rebellion. That was supposed to show me he could care less too, like a carnal buffing his fingernails. But he was leaking info-dense high-freq past faulty shielding that told me different.

Well, heyI just figured that maybe youd want to go on up to Providence and check it out.

Check it out, or bring some back?

Whatever pings your nodes.

Right. Its not like you couldnt sell all the spiral I could carryand thats about a metric ton, as you well knowfor enough megawattage to keep High Tower sparking for a month. Oh, no, this is pure do-goodery on your part.

What can I say? You sussed my coredump pure and simple. Saint Vend-o-mat, thats me.