"David R. Bunch was behind the densest, most poetic science fiction that's ever been written, and probably the darkest and bitterest too. If you're interested in fringe writers who demonstrate paths that the mainstream never encountered, Bunch is yours to lose. There's nothing like his work in literature anywhere.

Moderan is a loosely braided novel-in-stories about people who have cut off their flesh to add electronics, paved the entire earth in gray plastic and reduced their culture to a drive for endless war. Obsessively concerned with the cultural fallout of human-machine interfaces, it's plausibly the first work of cyberpunk: some of the included stories predate Neuromancer by more than twenty years. In hindsight, the work here is stranger and more startling than anything that the cyberpunk subgenre created as a coherent movement.

Bunch's greatest stylistic innovation came from integrating formal poetic techniques into straight-up prose. His mad sentences hinge on daring internal rhymes and clauses that repeat like fractals. At their best, these stories don't feel at all like stories. They feel like an evil child genius is shrieking at the inside of your head.

In a broad sense, Moderan comes from a place of devoted lyricism, but we expect poetic lyricism to exalt and cherish the world. Bunch hated the modern world too completely to even suggest alternatives. Instead, the book deploys its lyrical techniques to dramatize human arrogance, materialism and the uncritical worship of progress. It stands in mocking opposition to the Golden Age of Science fiction, the visions of rocketships and endless growth. Bunch rips mercilessly into his own literary tradition like Flann O'Brian, denounces his culture like Thomas Bernhard and challenges the universe's structural unfairness like Thomas Ligotti. Whether or not it'll ever come up in university coursepacks, Moderan is a crucial work of nihilist literature.

Today these stories still feel vibrant and avant-garde. They're unanimously dense and tricky reads, and Bunch's single-minded disgust for technological culture is enough to raise blisters on anyone still capable of guilt. But he didn't write this book for people to enjoy. He had this very un-American, very un-science fiction idea that stories could fix things."

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Moderan is back!

Moderan, the SF world of the future populated by men that are a combination flesh and futuristic metal forever seeking war, conquest and total domination. And the great war of Moderan is now underway. This New York Review Books edition of David R. Bunch’s classic is available for the first time since its original publication back in 1971.

Moderan men live in Srongholds. Moderan men live and breathe war - if they are not at war, Moderan men are forever setting plans for war.

Moderan men flowed from the pen of Missouri born and bred New Wave SF author David R. Bunch (1925-2000), the oddest duck in the fringe literary pond of odd ducks. Bunch found American culture with its obsession with progress via technology a repugnant nightmare. The smiling, smooth-talking, upbeat, success driven prototypical American male of the 1950s was for him the scum of the scum, a threat to nature and a violation of human decency.

As far as Bunch was concerned, the Golden Age of Science Fiction with its rocketships and up, up and away philosophy producing such works as Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was, to put it bluntly, shit on a stick.

To provide a taste of the author’s vision, I’ll focus on three chapters from the collection:

INCIDENT IN MODERAN
The tale is told in the first-person from the perspective of one of the Moderan men who is sitting on a chair outside his Stronghold, bored stiff since his side voted for a temporary ceasefire to let the damaged enemy rebuild so they can get back to blasting. He’s quick to tell us their brief letup has nothing to do with fair play or love thy neighbor, no, no, no � its about having a bigger and better war and thus greater quantities of hate and better chances to win honors. After all, he goes on, his own fort, Stronghold 10, is FIRST IN WAR, FIRST IN HATE, AND FIRST IN THE FEARS OF THE ENEMY (author’s capitals).

What strikes me with these Moderan men is that they might be part human, part metal (making them nearly indestructible) but it is the weakest human parts: a capacity for boredom combined with an unrelenting desire to hate and destroy while instilling fear in others. And to have these human traits made next to invincible through technological innovation in metal parts. Now that’s dangerous!

At that moment, Moderan man catches sight of a “piece of movement,� a mutant form roaming around on the homeless plastic (in Moderan man's world, the ground is covered in plastic). The thing approaches Moderan man. We read: “When he stood before me, I felt disturbed. Strangely I felt somehow guilty, and ashamed, that he was so bent and twisted and mushy-looking with flesh. Oh, why can’t they all be hard and shining with metal, and clean, like we Stronghold masters are, with a very minimum of flesh-strip holding them in shape? It makes for such a well-ordered and hate-happy life, the way we masters are in Moderan, so shiny and steellike in our glory, with our flesh-strips few and played down and new-metal alloy the bulk of our bodily splendor. But I suppose there must always be lower forms, insects for us to stride on.�

I’m quite confident readers will clearly detect the condescension of Moderan man. More metal = greatness and superiority; more flesh = weakness and inferiority. Likewise, I’m sure an observant reader will pick up the odd cadence and meshing of words. This is uniquely David R. Bunch � he wanted his future world Moderan men to have their own vocabulary and way of speaking � not as developed or nearly as sophisticated as Anthony Burgess� Clockwork Orange, but the language in Moderan is distinctly his own creation.

It had been nearly fifty years since the publication of Moderan. Has our culture and society moved in the direction of Moderan man? Are you familiar with the latest developments within the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? How much is your life currently intertwined with technology? Is your computer an extension of you or are you an extension of your computer?

And how free are we from our own versions of condescension? Case in point: I recall reading how one world leader said immigrants from lands south of his border were not humans but animals. Sounds like Moderan might be judged by some as an ideal to be pursued.

THINKING BACK ((OUR GOD IS A HELPING GOD!)
Moderan man recounts the creation of his race. Back when the air and water turned poison, people looked to their God on high. Their God was silent. The air and land and water became more poisoned, poisoned to the point where the life of those flesh men and flesh women were on the brink of extinction. But then came the solution! Replacing flesh with steel; replacing weak hearts with strong artificial hearts. A new, improved race was born - steely Moderan man, a man no longer the plaything of time - Moderan man's artificial heart would beat forever; Moderan man's steel body would never grow old. A giant steel man stood in the middle of Moderan man's world to serve as his ideal and God. The air, earth and water could continue to grow poisonous -- no problem for Moderan man since Moderan man transcended such lowly organic considerations.

And what happened to those flesh men who refused new replacement hearts and steel? We read: "And then the flesh-man - oh, consider. CONSIDER him - the sick few that are left. Please do. Then perhaps you will see why we in our new-shining glory, flesh-strips few and played-down, pay homage to a massive stick of new-metal placed as our guide star when New Processes Land, our great Moderan, was new!"

New world, new land, new Moderan man - steel conquers all!

NO CRACKS OR SAGGING
Our future Moderan man recording these tapes reflects back on the first time he crossed over into the lands of Moderan. He comes across huge, long-legged tamping machines pounding the ground. He’s perplexed. Why are these steely monsters pummeling the earth? He’s quickly given the answer along with the background of the Moderan world by a lowly old man who has just enough metal parts to oversee these jumbo mechanisms.

Turns out, the machines are doing the flattening, the ultimate goal being to cover the earth with a white-grey sheet of uniform plastic. No trees, no plants, no animals, no oceans even (seen as excess water). The old man also tells the visitor new to Moderan that he, the newcomer, has all the markings that will schedule him for a procedure turning him into one of the elite-elite steel war-making Stronghold leaders that will secure the future for the new world of Moderan.

Here’s a snatch from the chapter that highlights how David R. Bunch developed his own vocabulary and sentence rhythm as part of creating his new Moderan world: “I looked about and far and wide strolled still on that smoothed and rolled-down earth the tall cylinder-carrying monsters, and many was the jammy ram that was hunched into the position and having a go at the jug-jug-jug, phoo-phoo-phoo, bam-bam-bam that was its main mission.�

Ah, to cross over into Moderan with its plastic and supercharged war machines. Sounds like 1950s America taken to absurd extremes. But how absurd really? Many Americans love all the war and plastic. Just look at the comic books, TV shows and movies. The more artificial, the less nature and more people, the more killing and destruction, the better. Moderan as the future USA - all life that isn’t human and isn’t American can go straight to hell."

"Life changing. Girard's unified theory of human nature explains so many life experiences. Also, Girard's reinterpretation of Jesus' death is super interesting (I'm still contemplating if I agree, but I'm glad to have a new set of ideas to consider)."