Name: A.K.A. a Cosmic Fable
Rating: 3.73 (1 reviews)
ISBN: 9780395263068

Author 16 books247 followers

April 9, 2022

review of
Rob Swigart's A.K.A. A Cosmic Fable
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - April 7, 2022

For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

Yet-another author I wasn't previously familiar w/. I try to add authors to my mental database on a somewhat regular basis. I had this located in my SF-bks-to-be-read pile but it barely qualifies as SF - being more social satire. One of its more endearing characteristics for me is that it centers around Orgone Energy, the sexual energy postulated by Wilhelm Reich. It's presented as powering a spaceship, an idea I find particularly pleasing. Reading this has given me a little push in the direction of reading an entire Reich bk, something I have yet-to-do. I have many in my personal library. It also stimulates me to read Me and the Orgone - The True Story of One Man's Sexual Awakening by Orson Bean, wch I apparently read the 1st 41 pp of long ago.. & then petered out on.

The novel starts w/ Avery Krupp Augenblaue, industrialist & pioneer of independent space travel, returning from a 10 yr trip to outer space in a spaceship powered by Orgone Energy.

""He took off in the A.K.A. Monastic, and there was a riot in the stands."

""The stands?"

""Affirmative. Press corps, relatives, representatives of foreign governments, government officials. The President."

""Oh, God. The President. That's when he disappeared?"

""I perceive query in your tone. Affirmative."" - p 3

The "riot" referred to was actually a frenzied orgy triggered by the orgone energy backlash from the take-off. B/c of it, personal relations between all involved change dramatically.

"["]You could refer to my paper, "Some Lorentz-Fitzgerald Anomolies in the Augenblaue Intergalactic Flight: The Orgone Side Effect,' which was published last year in the Astrophysical Journal." - p 8

Constantine Hubble, a special investigator for the "Department" tries to question Dr. Ambrose Merkin, head of Augenblaue AeroSpace research about A.K.A.'s whereabouts b/c his anticipated public event after his return from outer space is expected to be an happening of society-shaking impact. Merkin appears to cooperate while giving Hubble the runaround.

""Doc-tor Mer-kin, please. We. Are. In. A. Hurry." A stratospheric voice.

""Right!" said Dr. Merkin with sudden vigor. "Let's get down to business. Well, Avery climbed down from the hatch. A technician had rolled an aluminum ladder up to the spacecraft, which as you know is shaped something like a dumpling, or perhaps a bagel with a door on the side.["]" - p 10

Avery has 2 daughters that he left behind for his journey. They have pets:

"The animal cages were mounted on a large three-tiered trolley so the girls could wheel their pets from room to room. Besides the five rabbits there was Arthur, the Galápagos tortoise; two boa constrictors, small and unnamed as yet; a coatimundi named Pecker; a cage with a fluid population of gerbils whose patriarch was named Pee Pee; and on top a revolting parrot in midmolt named Fats." - p 13

Given the sexual focus of the novel it's no surprise that there're a fair amt of sexual references:

"The vehicle Avery would travel in was not a rocket by conventional standards since Ambrose Merkin had developed the Merkin Drive for it. The A.K.A. Monastic flew entirely on orgone power alone."

[..]

"a special report on the revolutionary new Merkin Drive from Dick Peters" - p 16

A "merkin" is, of course, a pubic wig, & "Dick" & "Peter" are both slang terms for penis. But you knew that didn't you, John Thomas?

At the launch the press was well-represented. I particularly like the author's listing of them:

"The crowd became one being, unified by a single purpose—well-dressed women and well-groomed men, reporters of a hundred newspapers and syndicated services, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World report, Fortune, Gay Sunshine, Rolling Stone, Mother Earth News, Reuters, Playboy, Viva, Hustler, Field and Stream, Good Housekeeping, The Watchtower, Farm Quarterly, Pravda, Asahi, Screw." - p 19

Some of the above might be typical of such an event.. others, not so typical. For me, the enjoyment in reading the list is in the absurdity of some of the choices. The aftermath wd've been especially appropriate for the representatives of Screw.

"The A.K.A. Monastic had vanished, the pillar of light, sparkling and popping before their eyes, the proof of its existence. And all those zillions of coherent orgones in that column of light had nowhere to go once the ship they had propelled was gone. With nothing to push against they could do naught but zing and sing in their infinite column for those endless moments before losing their coherence and rapidly dispersing.

"They scattered into the incredulous crowd in the stands, infusing everyone with a rush of sexual energy so massive that the sounds of tearing clothes and sexual frenzy were truly awful in the memories of the survivors." - p 20

A result of this sexual frenzy was that Mrs. Kay Augenblaue, someone who'd previosuly hated sex, became obsessed w/ having sex w/ the butler, August. After one incident, the fire department was called to extricate glass from his body. An undercover agent posing as a fire dept EMT came to dress the wounds.

""I think that should do it," said the plain man in the crew cut after he had removed the glass, bandaged the butler's side , and sprayed his back with anesthetic.

""Thank you very much," said Kay, slipping a folded bill into the man's jacket pocket. "By the way, what is your name, in case we need you again?"

""Harker, ma'am. Jonathon Harker."" - p 23

Many of you will probably remember that Jonathon Harker is the name of the solicitor in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula whose job it is to arrange for Count Dracula to move to England.

There're multiple "A.K.A."s in the novel - something to arouse the suspicions of the attentive reader.

"But the moon wasn't settled, so A. K. Akley built his house in Hawaii instead where he was president of the Akley Republican Furniture Company, "Furniture for the Silent Majority." He built his house in Ka Lae because it was as close as he could get to the moon. Ka Lae was the southernmost point in the United States. The Polynesians who lived there gave Ka Lae to the white man, who gave them syphilis and Christianity in return. The name meant "South Cape," but that was not what attracted A. K. Akley to the spot. What attratced him was that it was completely sterile.

"Mauna Loa, the local volcano, a nasty goddess with an evil temper, periodically spread a thick layer of molten lava over Ka Lae, and every time she did, the highway department had to chisel out a new road. Nothing grew there and there was no fresh water. Like the moon, A. K. always said . Like the moon. Except of course that there was air to breathe and an agreeable ocean to swim in. And the days were shorter." - p 25

The "Silent Majority" having been a term coined by Nixon's Vice President, Spiro Agnew. It signified an assertion on Agnew's part that most Americans supported the 'conservative' Nixon policies but were too reserved to publicly annouce this. An alternative opinion might've been that most Americans just didn't give a shit one way or another.

There're quite a few characters whose lives are forever changed by the dramatic influx of orgone energy. I'm reminded of Pier Paolo Pasolini's film "Teorema" (1968).

"Sigismund, captain of the world's vastest frozen food empire, was glumly opening a package of Sparrow Frozen Knockwurst and Sauerkraut Dinner. It was the last package in his enormous freezer. He hadn't left the Sparrow mansion for over three weeks, but at irregular intervals he had opened up another packet of food and eaten it, sometimes without bothering to heat it up first. He hardly noticed, in his bleak and bereft depression, that he was eating ice." - p 30

Despite all the sexual liberation, all was not quite right.

"The day Avery returned from ten years in intergalactic space there were 312,005 dinner parties in the continental United States. There were also 4967 homocides that day.

"The welcome-home party that Kay gave for Avery was the only one of those 312,005 dinner parties to include a homocide. That day." - p 33

References to experimental film in novels seem to be few & far between. Given that I started out as an experimental filmmaker in 1975, 3 yrs before this novel appeared, the following was of special interest to me.

"The audience in the small theater squirmed uncomfortably under the electronic assault of the soundtrack, a vast descending stomach rumble. On the screen an enormous wave curled in superimposition over the peculiar face of William Lamplighter. This wave was slowed down about sixteen times, so it took a very long time to break. As the first drops began to fall gracefully away from the curling tip of the wave, the soundtrack suddenly, and inexplicably, modulated into a cavatina for two harps" - p 45

"Art smiled too. That had been quite a filming; even Andy Warhol, in Blow Job, hadn't been able to capture that fleeting moment with such gut-wrenching intensity." - p 46

A side-note is that I was the projectionist at the Andy Warhol Museum from 1996 to 2016. I remember one time when we were showing the Screen Test of well-known artist Marcel Duchamp, a close-up of his face, in a screening followed by Blow Job. The audience rarely stayed for more than a few minutes. On this occasion, some y'inzers came in, saw Duchamp, took it to be the Blow Job movie & got some good laughs out of 'the old geezer getting his rocks off'.

"The audience in the theater didn't know it, of course, but their reactions to the film, called Bugfuckfour, were being recorded by infrared photography. Art always used fragments of audience reaction in his films, blurred and solarized and unrecognizable." - p 47

For a movie of mine from 1978, see this:

"Ghost* *A Projectionist's Nightmare": pt 1: https://youtu.be/SjIq7ht33YQ , pt 2: https://youtu.be/nU5rMaKBRhs

&/or, for a movie of mine that uses drastic slowing-down:

"Titin": https://archive.org/details/Titin

Various key characters appear who may or may not be Avery, cloned or in disguise.

""I am, if I may introduce myself, the owner and operator of the Crystal Grape, Anton Armbruster. But you may call me Keb." - p 62

A.K.A. again?

""YOu know, you've just reminded me of someone, Mr. Armbruster. You look very familiar." Ed squinted in the dim light at Keb's face.

""Call me Keb."

""Uh, Keb. Very familiar."

""I'm quite sure we've never met before, Mr. Sox. I never forget a name or a face. Have a nice day."" - p 63

In the polymorphous perversity that's been triggered by the massive orgone exposure, the 2 Augenblaue daughters have become lovers.

""For a person who claims to hate sex all the time, she sure does get into it," Alicia Katherine told fourteen-year-old Angela as they stood at the door of the solarium. The sounds of pounding flesh wafted distinctly from the direction of the couch, backed by the moan of winter wind and the dismal wail of every bleached snowman adrift and lost in the snow.

""Sounds kinda like fun to me," said Angela warmly. "I wish I were a boy, then we could do it properly."

""You always wished you were a boy. Why don't you become one? We could run away to California, where you could get it done anonymously, no questions asked. It'd only take a couple of weeks. Besides, California's a very weird place, I hear. It could be interesting."" - p 63

""Look at it, Ally," he said to his sister when he returned to their sublet Nob Hill apartment. "It'll really work, just like it's supposed to."

""And my gosh, Angel, it's so cute. It's going to be a lot of fun to play with. Can we play with it now?"

""They say to wait a couple of months, to sort of get used to it, You know, everything's a little different now. But it works, I know it works. So let's stay in San Francisco until we can use it."" - p 64

Well, I hate to be a spoilsport but I don't think surgery in 1978 was advanced enuf to produce a penis that'd "really work, just like it's supposed to". Then again, after all, this IS science fiction.

""Ah, yes," said the doctor. "Nurse Thinger will be quite taken with you, I'm sure." He didn't seem to be joking. "Now if you'll just step into the irradiation chamber we'll get the more unpleasant parts of the treatment over with."" - p 70

One of the characters is masturbating a dog for scientific purposes.

"["]He's registered with the A.K.A."

""A.K.A.?" Ally asked.

""The American Kennel Association. Dogs."" - p 73

I once saw a guy jerk-off his pet dog. It wasn't for scientific purposes. But I won't tell that story here.

Even termites are eroticized.

"At the moment they came obliviously into Wanita's darkness, forniculotermes brevis chomped through the last millimaters of plastic veneer and began to release into the damp bedroom air minute quantities of p-chlorophenylalanine, or PCPA, the most powerful aphrodisiac known to nature." - p 80

"["]One is reminded of Ignatz Semelweiss. Cut and infected himself to prove that dirty hands were causing childbed fever. Lots of mothers and fathers dying of it all over the place at the time. He wanted to prove to everyone that dirty hands were responsible."

""What happened to him?"

""Oh, he died. Childbed fever. Another laughingstock, I'm afraid."" - pp 83-84

Now note the difference between that version of the story & the one on Wikipedia:

"Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (German: [ˈɪɡnaːts ˈzɛml̩vaɪs]; Hungarian: Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp [ˈsɛmmɛlvɛjs ˈiɡnaːts ˈfyløp]; 1 July 1818–13 August 1865) was an ethnic German-Hungarian physician and scientist born in the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire, now known as an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures. Described as the "saviour of mothers", Semmelweis discovered that the incidence of puerperal fever (also known as "childbed fever") could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal. Semmelweis proposed the practice of washing hands with chlorinated lime solutions in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards. He published a book of his findings in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.

"Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis's observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis supposedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating. Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory, and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist's research, practised and operated using hygienic methods, with great success."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_S...

Not to point out the obvious or anything (but to point out the obvious): if 19th century doctors cd be so bull-headed about something (nothing personal, bulls) cdn't 21st century drs also be bull-headed? I mean won't you feel foolish after I'm dead & everything I've ever sd that you've objected to turns out to be ABSOLUTE TRUTH & NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, SO HELP ME HOLY CEILING LIGHT?!

I'm reminded of the writing of the great Mervyn Peake in this next bit:

"She paced back and forth, wringing her hands, crossing and recrossing the trail of August's odors, stirring them into the mauve of the room. Her orange hair bobbed and swayed above her narrow face, a clump of rusty weeds in a vacant lot." - p 85

The Crystal Grape is a spa that people find themselves getting all-expenses-pd admission to for ulterior motives unknown to them, where they get sexually rejuvenated. Swigart's characterizations are full of mystery.

""Why don't you ever take off your hat?"

""No need."" - p 98

"Keb watched Betsy Sue sink into the warm mud. "How much weight has she lost?" he asked.

""Twenty." Duane slowly rotated a rheostat.

""Fifteen more and she'll be ready. Run it up to one-twenty."" - p 99

The recurring possibility of A.K.A. clones.

""You know something?" Sig said, still staring at Akley, "you remind me of someone but I can't quite . . ."

""Doubt it. Really doubt it. I seldom get out."

""Maybe we've met before. Or you have a brother . . ."" - p 104

& what about statistics? I like them, I use them.. &, yet..

""It is in the nature of statistics to be both extremely precise and entirely meaningless."" - p 107

""A while ago, you suggested that people were becoming less, uh, erotic."

""Indeed they are, on the whole. But there are pockets on the print-out. At times there is a resurgence, as it were. Sudden, inexplicable frenzies. The overall trend has been down, however. At least until recently."

""Aha. And what has happened recently?"

""Avery Augenblaue has returned, for one thing. The AKA Clubs and interest in The Blue Light. Amanita muscaria, now a highly illegal drug, outsells beer. William Lamplighter and Nurse Thinger and related phenomena. All signs of a change, perhaps. Here at the Biosynthetics Clinic we aim to do our share, work toward that change. We need it. Remember, a murder approximately every seventeen seconds."" - p 111

"Sig Sparrow, gray-haired and tanned, dressed head to toe in his pea green velvet six-button jacket and flared brown trousers over brown Earth Shoes, glasses tinted a delicate amber" - p 119

For the full review go here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

A.K.A. a Cosmic Fable

Rob Swigart

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