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Moderan
Welcome to Moderan, world of the future. Here perpetual war is waged by furious masters fighting from Strongholds well stocked with “arsenals of fear” and everyone is enamored with hate. The devastated earth is coated by vast sheets of gray plastic, while humans vie to replace more and more of their own “soft parts” with steel. What need is there for nature when trees and flowers can be pushed up through holes in the plastic? Who requires human companionship when new-metal mistresses are waiting? But even a Stronghold master can doubt the catechism of Moderan. Wanderers, poets, and his own children pay visits, proving that another world is possible.
“As if Whitman and Nietzsche had collaborated,” wrote Brian Aldiss of David R. Bunch’s work. Originally published in science-fiction magazines in the 1960s and ’70s, these mordant stories, though passionately sought by collectors, have been unavailable in a single volume for close to half a century. Like Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, Bunch coined a mind-bending new vocabulary. He sought not to divert readers from the horror of modernity but to make us face it squarely.
This volume includes eleven previously uncollected Moderan stories.
“As if Whitman and Nietzsche had collaborated,” wrote Brian Aldiss of David R. Bunch’s work. Originally published in science-fiction magazines in the 1960s and ’70s, these mordant stories, though passionately sought by collectors, have been unavailable in a single volume for close to half a century. Like Anthony Burgess in A Clockwork Orange, Bunch coined a mind-bending new vocabulary. He sought not to divert readers from the horror of modernity but to make us face it squarely.
This volume includes eleven previously uncollected Moderan stories.
304 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1971
120 people are currently reading
2854 people want to read
About the author
David R. Bunch
53 books27 followersDavid Roosevelt Bunch (1920–2000) was born in rural western Missouri. After serving as an army corporal during World War II, he worked toward a PhD in English literature at Washington University in St. Louis and then transferred to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied for two years before dropping out. He married Phyllis Flette in 1951 and they had two daughters, Phyllis and Velma. While working as a cartographer for the Defense Mapping Agency in St. Louis, he began publishing stories in sciencefiction magazines, two of which were included in Harlan Ellison’s landmark 1967 sci-fi anthology, Dangerous Visions. In 1971, Bunch published Moderan, a collection of stories set on a future earth devastated by war and environmental exploitation. In 1973, he retired from cartography to pursue writing full-time. A poetry chapbook, We Have a Nervous Job, followed in 1983, and Bunch! (1993), another book of short stories, was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Bunch’s last book, the poetry collection The Heartacher and the Warehouseman, came out in April 2000. He died of a heart attack the following month. In 1965 he told Amazing Stories, “I’m not in this business primarily to describe or explain or entertain. I’m here to make the reader think, even if I have to bash his teeth out, break his legs, grind him up, beat him down, and totally chastise him for the terrible and tinsel and almost wholly bad world we allow.”
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 98 reviews
May 13, 2022
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.
March 6, 2020
At first, I thought this was just overblown, campy sf writing. Now I think it's incredible.
The stories are often more like dystopian poetry pieces or meditations, set in a world where everything has been destroyed by nuclear holocaust and the survivors have become immortal endlessly warring bro robots.
There's a tremendous sense of humor to this terribly bleak book, and even in the worst things it portrays and lampoons, it made me laugh while still really getting at something important each time. I don't read short stories very well, so I read this book much slower than I would have otherwise. I'm glad I did, because I kept hearing Moderan in dialogue with the world around me. I heard echoes of it in conversations and the news, in the way people framed their ambitions and their pursuits, and in how people treat each other.
Moderan has a singular style with a lot of CAPS for EMPHASIS that somehow never gets old. I have no idea how Bunch pulled that off. The little tales aren't always perfect, but they are usually a mix of horrific, illuminating, thoughtful and entertaining. The recurring language is incredible and just right for the stories in here ("flesh strips"). The rhythm of the sentences is wonderful.
Each short chapter is like a little parable about something I might take for granted. There's a lot of perspective. I'll be thinking through and with Moderan for a long time, I think.
The stories are often more like dystopian poetry pieces or meditations, set in a world where everything has been destroyed by nuclear holocaust and the survivors have become immortal endlessly warring bro robots.
There's a tremendous sense of humor to this terribly bleak book, and even in the worst things it portrays and lampoons, it made me laugh while still really getting at something important each time. I don't read short stories very well, so I read this book much slower than I would have otherwise. I'm glad I did, because I kept hearing Moderan in dialogue with the world around me. I heard echoes of it in conversations and the news, in the way people framed their ambitions and their pursuits, and in how people treat each other.
Moderan has a singular style with a lot of CAPS for EMPHASIS that somehow never gets old. I have no idea how Bunch pulled that off. The little tales aren't always perfect, but they are usually a mix of horrific, illuminating, thoughtful and entertaining. The recurring language is incredible and just right for the stories in here ("flesh strips"). The rhythm of the sentences is wonderful.
Each short chapter is like a little parable about something I might take for granted. There's a lot of perspective. I'll be thinking through and with Moderan for a long time, I think.
July 24, 2016
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.
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.
November 16, 2025
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: First, read this:
Fifty years ago, these stories...I really bridle at calling them stories, it feels to me more like loosely interconnected chapters of a single, too-big-to-fail novel...appeared. I wasn't aware of them. I was too young to "get" them. I am still too young to get them...they are brilliant tours-de-force of a man's vision of a future no one could possibly want, but they're likely to get anyway.
In a lot of ways, Author Bunch's world reminds me of the world that Sandy Hook took place in, and no one stopped it from happening again.
J.G. Ballard at his bleakest, John Brunner at his most sarcastic, Joanna Russ at her most misandric. SF futures don't usually age well...this one, more's the pity, has.
My Review: First, read this:
“WE’LL FIGHT! We’ll fight each other. We’ll make harsh monsters, set them loose and fight such monsters across all our space. We’ll move with engines and hard, programmed thoughts. We’ll make all manner of dragons for our involvement, and we’ll overcome them. For we’ll program the conquests a little more carefully than we’ll feed in the threats. But mostly we’ll just fight each other—each other and ourselves, the truly tireless enemies.”
Fifty years ago, these stories...I really bridle at calling them stories, it feels to me more like loosely interconnected chapters of a single, too-big-to-fail novel...appeared. I wasn't aware of them. I was too young to "get" them. I am still too young to get them...they are brilliant tours-de-force of a man's vision of a future no one could possibly want, but they're likely to get anyway.
In a lot of ways, Author Bunch's world reminds me of the world that Sandy Hook took place in, and no one stopped it from happening again.
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!
J.G. Ballard at his bleakest, John Brunner at his most sarcastic, Joanna Russ at her most misandric. SF futures don't usually age well...this one, more's the pity, has.
April 24, 2014
From the late 1950's through the early 1970's David R. Bunch's Moderan stories appeared sporadically, mostly in AMAZING and FANTASTIC magazines, before being collected in this nice little volume. More stories appeared for years afterwards, but unfortunately an updated or comprehensive edition never was published. Bunch was known as an excellent poet, and his careful choice of words create poignant scenes and situations. It's not a fast or easy read, but is an enriching and satisfying example of the early "new-wave" sf movement.
January 6, 2011
This is a gem of a work by a little known, underappreciated science fiction writer and poet who wrote with an attention to language rare in the genre. I read the thing on the recommendation of my roommate decades ago, but the mere thought of it brings the cadences back to mind with clarity and force. This might be a book, one of the only books, to bring pimply-geek sf fans to poetry.
Ostensibly, there's nothing lyrical about the interlocked cyborg stories constituting this collection. The themes are overwhelmingly masculine: superheroics, pride, war and clever deception. Yet, painfully obvious just under the surface, the real character of these singing man-machines is that of fear, anxiety and self-delusion. It is as if the classic heros of 1950s science fiction had their garages and workshops transformed into command centers, their homes into walled compounds in a Hobbesian orgy of paranoia and aggression.
Maybe this book affected me so much because my family lived in lily-white suburbia, just one step from a gated community, when I was in high school. We were demographically out of place in Park Ridge, Socialists masked as Democrats amoung Republicans; atheists among fundamentalists. The Moderans reminded me of our neighbors, the male householders, their Ids writ large, armed and armored.
Maybe this book affected me so much because I myself was infected by the surrounding inimical environment and its values.
Ostensibly, there's nothing lyrical about the interlocked cyborg stories constituting this collection. The themes are overwhelmingly masculine: superheroics, pride, war and clever deception. Yet, painfully obvious just under the surface, the real character of these singing man-machines is that of fear, anxiety and self-delusion. It is as if the classic heros of 1950s science fiction had their garages and workshops transformed into command centers, their homes into walled compounds in a Hobbesian orgy of paranoia and aggression.
Maybe this book affected me so much because my family lived in lily-white suburbia, just one step from a gated community, when I was in high school. We were demographically out of place in Park Ridge, Socialists masked as Democrats amoung Republicans; atheists among fundamentalists. The Moderans reminded me of our neighbors, the male householders, their Ids writ large, armed and armored.
Maybe this book affected me so much because I myself was infected by the surrounding inimical environment and its values.
March 4, 2021
"At my ease I do not look like a god. I must look more like an old suit of armor once would have looked if it had in the ancient days rolled in some thick-sliced bacon and then gone to bed on a bridge truss. Yes we look like walking steel shells with flesh piping, in Moderan, and we think of wars and good pounding. To live forever, to be our true bad selves--these are our twin destinations."
Quite simply one of the best science fiction books I've ever read, and one of the best books maybe ever. Imagine being locked for eternity in a closet for primal scream therapy atop a pile of gristle and discarded car parts with the love-child of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and a Capitol rioter and you have something of the voice of Moderan.
Moderan is the future. Moderan is New Process. Moderan is a landscape covered in sheets of beautiful plastic from which sprout the metal flowers directed by the Commission of Beauty. Moderan is the story of Stronghold 10. Stronghold 10 recently had most of his humanity removed and is a new-metal man (save for his remaining flesh-strips and pure green blood pumped through his air sacs with his chest bellows) and is given his own fortress with which to rain ruin and war and fierce poundings down onto the other Strongholds, the raison d'etre of future humanity being vicious, ridiculous, hyperbolic war. Wumps, doll bombs, Max Havoc. There's time for love, too, not the White Witch of White Witch Valley (Stronghold 10's ex-wife) but new-mistresses one merely pulls out from under the bed and thumbs on for Joy during truce times.
I can't really do this work justice beyond that. The above pretty much sums it up. It's a mosaic novel, short little chapters of Stronghold 10's eternal war, which get broken up more and more by the occasional wanderer over the homeless plastic landscape (10's children, an artist, a prophet) and slowly but surely the Moderan dream begins to teeter, totter, and become even more viciously violent.
At all turns, insane, wacky, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, I can't recommend this enough. The question of whether arbitrary cruelty is acceptable answers itself, here through vicious irony and high-poetic sadism.
Quite simply one of the best science fiction books I've ever read, and one of the best books maybe ever. Imagine being locked for eternity in a closet for primal scream therapy atop a pile of gristle and discarded car parts with the love-child of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and a Capitol rioter and you have something of the voice of Moderan.
Moderan is the future. Moderan is New Process. Moderan is a landscape covered in sheets of beautiful plastic from which sprout the metal flowers directed by the Commission of Beauty. Moderan is the story of Stronghold 10. Stronghold 10 recently had most of his humanity removed and is a new-metal man (save for his remaining flesh-strips and pure green blood pumped through his air sacs with his chest bellows) and is given his own fortress with which to rain ruin and war and fierce poundings down onto the other Strongholds, the raison d'etre of future humanity being vicious, ridiculous, hyperbolic war. Wumps, doll bombs, Max Havoc. There's time for love, too, not the White Witch of White Witch Valley (Stronghold 10's ex-wife) but new-mistresses one merely pulls out from under the bed and thumbs on for Joy during truce times.
I can't really do this work justice beyond that. The above pretty much sums it up. It's a mosaic novel, short little chapters of Stronghold 10's eternal war, which get broken up more and more by the occasional wanderer over the homeless plastic landscape (10's children, an artist, a prophet) and slowly but surely the Moderan dream begins to teeter, totter, and become even more viciously violent.
At all turns, insane, wacky, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, I can't recommend this enough. The question of whether arbitrary cruelty is acceptable answers itself, here through vicious irony and high-poetic sadism.
March 8, 2013
Possibly the most imaginative fiction I've ever read. Humanity survives ecological disaster by covering the world in plastic and converting themselves to cyborgs, maintaining the tiniest possible scraps of flesh in order to remain "human." Bunch firmly establishes his own insane world of cybernetic stronghold masters and fills it with astute observations on human nature. The flowing poetic prose is a challenge at first; it's a code that you have to crack but the effort pays off. Should be regarded as a classic.
April 13, 2025
Welcome to Moderan, the shittiest post-apocalyptic Shangri-La that Science Fiction has ever seen. Come visit the toxic plains of Homeless Plastic. Watch the birds made of tin soar above war-scarred palaces, chase wild dogs made of steel through forests made of cellophane, and cultivate the aluminum flowers sprouting from your lawns of green infertile plastic while 'vapor shields' change the seasons like gel slides within this polluted and homicidal bubble world.
I AM NEW METAL MAN!
Those chosen few who physically possess more metal to accompany their last mortal flesh strips become a Stronghold: New Metal lords who live in bulletproof alloy fortresses behind walls guarded by missile systems, fire and laser machines, and the worst of the worst weaponry, the dreaded walking doll bombs!
I'm not sure there is a more colorful and more maddening book than Moderan. When you take out the brassy BOLD humor out of this one, THE ALL CAPS INSANITIES, what is left is a deadworld document about neverending misanthropy and the casual trigger-happy entropy that cheap cybernetic technology can embrace. Moderan is hate philosophy as situational comedy. Despite the cancers growing in between the plates of New Metal Men, there is nothing real in Moderan besides mockery of the living. All is revered with hatred towards every facet of living. You can't find much solidarity in Moderan, so you better get used to being in solitary with all your useless war toys. Even the metal ex-wives prefer the Plastic Men over the New Metal Men. Domestic bliss has broken with the bombs. And what future hope there is for humanity, the only constant is unhappiness.
"I'm practically sure there is no Happiness Machine out there anywhere at all. I'm almost sure there isn't."
Life is simple in Moderan. Strongholds battle each other on a daily basis, blanketfuck bomb each other but miraculously nobody ever dies. Only harmed are those confined to bubble homes, a vast suburbia of low to middle living for those never to have enough metal to become a lord. When some of the low class start to find 'pieces of soul' out amidst these wastelands, there may just be hopes of a revolution, but in the meantime, more war, more introven shots to the flesh strips, and more time to contemplate the great, big NOTHING, THE BIG MODERAN DREAM.
Strongholds live a secular life. Hate is all they have left. Their wives have left them to live in White Witch Valley, their New Metal Mistresses are stored under their beds like vacuums, and what little joy they get is from their post-apocalyptic savagery occasionally offset with some casual time for contemplation, primarily sitting in their hip snuggie chairs, drinking introven fruit punch, and meditating on Universal Deep Thinking while their tin cats chase tin rodents through their vast mansions of madness.
Third part is more situational comedy. Visitors come far and wide from the north and the south from Olderan to visit our protagonist's fortress, one of the last ports before the dreaded bomb-scarred wastelands. Tin men who uncontrollably weep, naked hippy men preaching hedonism, old men on scrap metal horses like junkyard knights - each visit our New Metal Man in hopes of some salvation, only to be deflated yet again by profane ignorance and a tin-can 'fuck off'. What hope is there really when they've covered Chernobyl in plastic and filled up the oceans with cement? The joke is eternal.
"Of course it was a wide joke sent up from the Palace of the Witch, and that was why the air over the White Valley was suddenly alive with big clown-faced balloons and the long guns of laugh salvoing out a full Ho-Ho salute."
Yes, here in Moderan you will go insane. It is Science Fiction with as much poetic delirium as a Samuel Beckett novel, and a grotesque reverie unhinged with experimental and literary aplomb. Beyond comprehension and beyond critique. Perhaps we were duped -- David Bunch really was William Burroughs incognito.
Welcome to Moderan! An entropic funhouse, a literary supernova, only one of its kind, a doomscript classic!
I AM NEW METAL MAN!
Those chosen few who physically possess more metal to accompany their last mortal flesh strips become a Stronghold: New Metal lords who live in bulletproof alloy fortresses behind walls guarded by missile systems, fire and laser machines, and the worst of the worst weaponry, the dreaded walking doll bombs!
I'm not sure there is a more colorful and more maddening book than Moderan. When you take out the brassy BOLD humor out of this one, THE ALL CAPS INSANITIES, what is left is a deadworld document about neverending misanthropy and the casual trigger-happy entropy that cheap cybernetic technology can embrace. Moderan is hate philosophy as situational comedy. Despite the cancers growing in between the plates of New Metal Men, there is nothing real in Moderan besides mockery of the living. All is revered with hatred towards every facet of living. You can't find much solidarity in Moderan, so you better get used to being in solitary with all your useless war toys. Even the metal ex-wives prefer the Plastic Men over the New Metal Men. Domestic bliss has broken with the bombs. And what future hope there is for humanity, the only constant is unhappiness.
"I'm practically sure there is no Happiness Machine out there anywhere at all. I'm almost sure there isn't."
Life is simple in Moderan. Strongholds battle each other on a daily basis, blanketfuck bomb each other but miraculously nobody ever dies. Only harmed are those confined to bubble homes, a vast suburbia of low to middle living for those never to have enough metal to become a lord. When some of the low class start to find 'pieces of soul' out amidst these wastelands, there may just be hopes of a revolution, but in the meantime, more war, more introven shots to the flesh strips, and more time to contemplate the great, big NOTHING, THE BIG MODERAN DREAM.
Strongholds live a secular life. Hate is all they have left. Their wives have left them to live in White Witch Valley, their New Metal Mistresses are stored under their beds like vacuums, and what little joy they get is from their post-apocalyptic savagery occasionally offset with some casual time for contemplation, primarily sitting in their hip snuggie chairs, drinking introven fruit punch, and meditating on Universal Deep Thinking while their tin cats chase tin rodents through their vast mansions of madness.
Third part is more situational comedy. Visitors come far and wide from the north and the south from Olderan to visit our protagonist's fortress, one of the last ports before the dreaded bomb-scarred wastelands. Tin men who uncontrollably weep, naked hippy men preaching hedonism, old men on scrap metal horses like junkyard knights - each visit our New Metal Man in hopes of some salvation, only to be deflated yet again by profane ignorance and a tin-can 'fuck off'. What hope is there really when they've covered Chernobyl in plastic and filled up the oceans with cement? The joke is eternal.
"Of course it was a wide joke sent up from the Palace of the Witch, and that was why the air over the White Valley was suddenly alive with big clown-faced balloons and the long guns of laugh salvoing out a full Ho-Ho salute."
Yes, here in Moderan you will go insane. It is Science Fiction with as much poetic delirium as a Samuel Beckett novel, and a grotesque reverie unhinged with experimental and literary aplomb. Beyond comprehension and beyond critique. Perhaps we were duped -- David Bunch really was William Burroughs incognito.
Welcome to Moderan! An entropic funhouse, a literary supernova, only one of its kind, a doomscript classic!
June 28, 2014
-Hay cosas que no son nada populares, pero tienen su pequeño grupo de admiradores que las adoran hasta límites insospechados-.
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Un miembro del pueblo del Sueño de la Tierra de la Esencia encuentra unas grabaciones procedentes del pasado, relatos de cuando el mundo se llamaba Moderan y estaba poblado por seres mecánicos, en parte metal y en parte carne (excepto unos pocos habitantes, de carne y hueso, que vivían en Rumboviejo). Esta es la transcripción de algunos de esos relatos.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
Género. Ciencia-Ficción.
Lo que nos cuenta. Un miembro del pueblo del Sueño de la Tierra de la Esencia encuentra unas grabaciones procedentes del pasado, relatos de cuando el mundo se llamaba Moderan y estaba poblado por seres mecánicos, en parte metal y en parte carne (excepto unos pocos habitantes, de carne y hueso, que vivían en Rumboviejo). Esta es la transcripción de algunos de esos relatos.
¿Quiere saber más del libro, sin spoilers? Visite:
http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...
December 15, 2022
These are short stories, from the 1960s mostly, and collected here in a single volume for the first time. They read almost like a serialised novel though—same main character and setting throughout.
And it’s quite a setting. This is a future world in which the land surface has been levelled and coated in plastic, the oceans frozen or discarded into space and Nature replaced altogether: flowers and birds are now made of coloured tin and artificial trees poke up through holes in the plastic. Our main character too, though originally a flesh-and-blood human, has been transformed—organs, limbs, even eyeballs now new-metal-alloy versions, with only thin strips of flesh remaining. The result, Stronghold 10, is the clanking, clunky, occupier of a fortress, and the plastic plain is dotted with similar fortresses. Stronghold-masters are, in effect, immortal and to fill the time they wage war on one another. During the truces between wars, Stronghold 10 has fun—his idea of fun mostly being to sit and think, pondering Universal Deep Problems.
This is exceptionally strange stuff, not least due to the idiosyncratic writing style which reminded me (a bit) of Cordwainer Smith’s weird “up-and-out” stories (“the up-and-out” being Smith’s term for interstellar space). There are other oddities too: for instance, although Stronghold-masters routinely wage total war, there are no actual descriptions of it. Also, while supposedly near-invincible, Stronghold 10 comes across much of the time as a bumbling and eccentric old man.
So what is Moderan about? Well, by becoming artificial (or 92% so in Stronghold 10’s case) its inhabitants and their sterile plastic world are safe—immune from change of any kind in fact—and I think these stories are about the price they’ve paid for that, what they’ve lost. In particular they’ve lost most of the emotions, such as love, as seen in the stories about Stronghold 10 and his daughter (“A Little Girl’s Xmas in Moderan”). This author is clearly against science, against technology, against the whole modern world, and Moderan is his view of what we’re doing to ourselves as a species in real life: becoming impervious to all natural dangers by living lives that are ever more artificial. This definitely isn’t a weird future he’s describing, it’s David R Bunch’s view of the world we already live in (and I even found myself wondering while reading: to our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors of fifty-thousand years ago or so, might this be how we would have looked to them?).
On the one hand, unlike the author, I’m not myself in any way cynical about science, not anti-technology or anti-the-modern-world-and-everything-in-it. But on the other hand, this book is exactly the sort of thing I read science fiction for: in the hope that every now and then, if I’m lucky, I’ll stumble across something really odd, a bit different. And this certainly is.
And it’s quite a setting. This is a future world in which the land surface has been levelled and coated in plastic, the oceans frozen or discarded into space and Nature replaced altogether: flowers and birds are now made of coloured tin and artificial trees poke up through holes in the plastic. Our main character too, though originally a flesh-and-blood human, has been transformed—organs, limbs, even eyeballs now new-metal-alloy versions, with only thin strips of flesh remaining. The result, Stronghold 10, is the clanking, clunky, occupier of a fortress, and the plastic plain is dotted with similar fortresses. Stronghold-masters are, in effect, immortal and to fill the time they wage war on one another. During the truces between wars, Stronghold 10 has fun—his idea of fun mostly being to sit and think, pondering Universal Deep Problems.
This is exceptionally strange stuff, not least due to the idiosyncratic writing style which reminded me (a bit) of Cordwainer Smith’s weird “up-and-out” stories (“the up-and-out” being Smith’s term for interstellar space). There are other oddities too: for instance, although Stronghold-masters routinely wage total war, there are no actual descriptions of it. Also, while supposedly near-invincible, Stronghold 10 comes across much of the time as a bumbling and eccentric old man.
So what is Moderan about? Well, by becoming artificial (or 92% so in Stronghold 10’s case) its inhabitants and their sterile plastic world are safe—immune from change of any kind in fact—and I think these stories are about the price they’ve paid for that, what they’ve lost. In particular they’ve lost most of the emotions, such as love, as seen in the stories about Stronghold 10 and his daughter (“A Little Girl’s Xmas in Moderan”). This author is clearly against science, against technology, against the whole modern world, and Moderan is his view of what we’re doing to ourselves as a species in real life: becoming impervious to all natural dangers by living lives that are ever more artificial. This definitely isn’t a weird future he’s describing, it’s David R Bunch’s view of the world we already live in (and I even found myself wondering while reading: to our distant hunter-gatherer ancestors of fifty-thousand years ago or so, might this be how we would have looked to them?).
On the one hand, unlike the author, I’m not myself in any way cynical about science, not anti-technology or anti-the-modern-world-and-everything-in-it. But on the other hand, this book is exactly the sort of thing I read science fiction for: in the hope that every now and then, if I’m lucky, I’ll stumble across something really odd, a bit different. And this certainly is.
March 14, 2021
Great forward by Jeff VanderMeer, but reading the following introduction to the NYRB edition right off the bat is a mistake if you are picking this up for the very first time; I did so and immediately wondered if I should just skip this one because it gave me a headache two pages in (and served as a case in point that introductions should be saved for last). But I skipped the intro and started to read this nonetheless, and I'm so glad I did. Moderan is WEIRD, funny, disturbing, relentless, and intriguing if you're a fan of the wholly original and of language in general, though you probably won't be able to get through it in one reading. This book will keep its place on my shelf.
March 20, 2017
Certain of these stories - strange, lyrical, violent - are among my very favorites. The least of them are hardly there at all.
March 12, 2025
5 stars for being so strange and being 100% committed to it!
October 25, 2021
As I’ve commented before, a three-star rating covers a wealth of sins. In this case, Moderan is definitely more than 3 but less than 4, take that as you will.
The book is a collection of short stories – very short in many cases – set in a dystopian future of metal-:and-plastic men* whose raison d’etre is war, society having succumbed to the idea that humanity’s natural state is violence. [Which reminds me of the TOS episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” All things come back to Star Trek eventually. 😊]
Most of the stories are written from the POV of one of Moderan’s rulers, Stronghold 10. Stronghold 10 was one of the first new-metal men and . He’s an interesting, and sympathetic, character. He professes to wholeheartedly support the Moderan philosophy and excels at war but he’s tormented by self-doubt and the fear that something is catastrophically wrong with the new order.
The writing style reminds me of Cordwainer Smith. It’s exuberant and upbeat especially when describing the most gruesome horrors:
If you need reasons to read, Jeff VanderMeer makes a good point in his Foreward about reading Moderan: “The stories are at heart about how we no longer recognize dystopia because it’s been sold to us as utopia, about how we may not understand the irreplaceable value of aspects of the human and nonhuman world until they are irreplaceably gone from our lives” (p. xii).
I recommend it, regardless.
* I use the word "men" deliberately. In the new-metal world of Moderan women do not signify. They are toys meant to sexually satisfy the libidos of the Strongholds and when the men are done with them, they turn their life switches to OFF and shove them under the bed.
The book is a collection of short stories – very short in many cases – set in a dystopian future of metal-:and-plastic men* whose raison d’etre is war, society having succumbed to the idea that humanity’s natural state is violence. [Which reminds me of the TOS episode “A Taste of Armageddon.” All things come back to Star Trek eventually. 😊]
Most of the stories are written from the POV of one of Moderan’s rulers, Stronghold 10. Stronghold 10 was one of the first new-metal men and . He’s an interesting, and sympathetic, character. He professes to wholeheartedly support the Moderan philosophy and excels at war but he’s tormented by self-doubt and the fear that something is catastrophically wrong with the new order.
The writing style reminds me of Cordwainer Smith. It’s exuberant and upbeat especially when describing the most gruesome horrors:
The bones were special special rock-bottom hurt, like drilling a thousand dozen teeth all at one time for you might be and all drills touching nerves – WEEAAAOO-OHHH…WEEAAAOOOHHH…WEEAAAOO-OHHH…OOOHHH…OOOHHH…It was at the boning of bones that I discovered that the hospital was providing me with special things in my foods and beverages so that I might experience more pain per second without losing consciousness – WEE-EAAAOOOHHH…WEEEAAAOOOHHH…OOOHHH…OOOHHH…than I would have otherwise been able to do… (pp. 36-7)
If you need reasons to read, Jeff VanderMeer makes a good point in his Foreward about reading Moderan: “The stories are at heart about how we no longer recognize dystopia because it’s been sold to us as utopia, about how we may not understand the irreplaceable value of aspects of the human and nonhuman world until they are irreplaceably gone from our lives” (p. xii).
I recommend it, regardless.
* I use the word "men" deliberately. In the new-metal world of Moderan women do not signify. They are toys meant to sexually satisfy the libidos of the Strongholds and when the men are done with them, they turn their life switches to OFF and shove them under the bed.
May 23, 2022
"Ran, ran, Moderan, I Moderan (yeah), Moderan, Moderan, I Moderan (oooh whee ahh ooooh)"
New York Review of Books has been consistently putting out lovely editions of some of the strangest SF I have ever read.
This collection of stories reminds me a lot of Stanislav Lem; i.e. Philosophical Fiction
The comparisons to "A Clockwork Orange" I think are a bit lazy. Just because you have some made up phrases doesn't mean this is Burgess. That said, this book has some very inventive expressions/writing. Just...just look at this description of the material that is used in the omnipresent wars...
"I'll give him the Grandpa Wumps, the high-up weird screaming wreck-wrecks, the White-Witch missiles bite and the doll bombs as they run. I'll slap his guts shreddy with my new cosmos-range seek-and-destroy man-blammers."
Yep. The land of Moderan is VERY strange. The stories are not really stories, more vignettes of a world where the sole pursuit is war and men run everything.
Definitely worth checking out for its originality.
My only complaint? There are actually too many stories in the book. I think that the previous release with fewer stories may have been stronger. As it is, you may suffer from Moderan burn-out.
New York Review of Books has been consistently putting out lovely editions of some of the strangest SF I have ever read.
This collection of stories reminds me a lot of Stanislav Lem; i.e. Philosophical Fiction
The comparisons to "A Clockwork Orange" I think are a bit lazy. Just because you have some made up phrases doesn't mean this is Burgess. That said, this book has some very inventive expressions/writing. Just...just look at this description of the material that is used in the omnipresent wars...
"I'll give him the Grandpa Wumps, the high-up weird screaming wreck-wrecks, the White-Witch missiles bite and the doll bombs as they run. I'll slap his guts shreddy with my new cosmos-range seek-and-destroy man-blammers."
Yep. The land of Moderan is VERY strange. The stories are not really stories, more vignettes of a world where the sole pursuit is war and men run everything.
Definitely worth checking out for its originality.
My only complaint? There are actually too many stories in the book. I think that the previous release with fewer stories may have been stronger. As it is, you may suffer from Moderan burn-out.
November 20, 2023
AN ENTIRELY STRANGE, OFTEN ANNOYING READ, WITH INTERESTING IDEAS BUT LITTLE PLOT. LACK OF THIS COMPELLING DRIVE MADE IT A CHORE, BUT THERE IS STILL SOMETHING I LIKE ABOUT THIS BOOK, SEEMINGLY WRITTEN BY SOMEONE MENTALLY ILL ON AMPHETAMINES. THE STYLE AND VOICE ARE COMPLETELY ORIGINAL. BUT IT'S ALSO IRRITATING.
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The above review was written after toiling through less than half the novel. I have now read it to completion and find it much more satisfying -- stunningly original, a quality I'm always seeking.
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The above review was written after toiling through less than half the novel. I have now read it to completion and find it much more satisfying -- stunningly original, a quality I'm always seeking.
October 4, 2024
David R Bunch is a forgotten science fiction writer, his book Moderan is a seemingly future dystopia fiction. I didn’t know him till read this book, and some readers said that Bunch had the difficult to get his other works published, he was losing his audiences after he just published a few books. I think I can see why because his writing is too unique to be bizarre. It is not the taste for modern readers to like. Secondly, Moderan is a book with different story structure that doesn’t tell a whole story instead of recounting different story in a future world calls Moderan. It is a short story collections which discusses many themes such as parenting, war, humanity, immortality etc. in the world when people decided to remove their flesh replace them with machines, like sybrogs. Scarcely could see flesh inside those machinery-skeleton Moderans. Moderans frequently start wars with their neighbors, White Witches. They are aggressive and intimidating to eliminate things of which they want to get rid. Mostly the perspectives of the story would focus on the leader of Stronghold 10 and his observations of the communities.
Moderan brutally depicts the probabilities of the future which would potentially be the America future. The environment would be covered by plastics, the flora and fauna are not organic, they are mental or machines. Sometimes Moderans would e curious about the past world, sometimes they don’t and would be vindictive to the species with flesh. The stories in Moderans use the structure of fable that warming us about the impending trends would be like if we wouldn’t be aware of it. I think the biggest issue of this book is the repetition of retelling the same story in different forms, about half of them are telling the same things.
Personally rating: 7.5 out of 10 points.
Moderan brutally depicts the probabilities of the future which would potentially be the America future. The environment would be covered by plastics, the flora and fauna are not organic, they are mental or machines. Sometimes Moderans would e curious about the past world, sometimes they don’t and would be vindictive to the species with flesh. The stories in Moderans use the structure of fable that warming us about the impending trends would be like if we wouldn’t be aware of it. I think the biggest issue of this book is the repetition of retelling the same story in different forms, about half of them are telling the same things.
Personally rating: 7.5 out of 10 points.
March 22, 2025
a rare example of high concept sci book that matches big ideas with an actual writing style. bunch was originally writing these as early as the 50s, which is fairly wild because his vision of a future in which fascist cyborgs wage ritual mechanised wars against each other remotely and talk about how superior they are while in actual fact being inwardly terrified by almost everything and having complexes about their wives who they've replaced with sex robots sounds a little familiar to me, an early 21st century guy.
October 6, 2015
Cons: obscure (the writing, not just the physical book, which is hard to find), static, occasionally too allegorically neat. Pros: prose is its own breed, at first childish and near gibberish and then, you slowly realize, near masterful. No one, NO ONE, writes like this mufucka. Vision = unrelenting and gonzo-awesome and simultaneously hilarious and chilling and moving. Best stories/chapters in here = some of the best fiction I've ever read. Must dig up more from this guy, he's almost disappeared.
September 19, 2019
This has been a nearly perfect book. Put together like a novel, it suffers from a mild bit of continuity errors since it was written as a series of short stories over a period of thirty years. However, I have never encountered a book with such singular focus. Bunch uses science fiction to furiously mock both the vision and authority of scientism and does so ceaselessly.
Also, the prose is incredible and inventive.
Also, the prose is incredible and inventive.
August 19, 2015
excellent... wish it was available in digital format. I first read the 2 stories in Dangerous Visions... then found the paperback. It was disjointed, uniquely different, and written like someone was talking to you. And somewhere I still have it. I consider it one of the best collections I ever read.
August 23, 2025
Moderan is a collection of short science fiction stories that were published by David R. Bunch in various magazines between 1960 and 1989. These stories are all centered around the world of Moderan, which is a satirical, irony-ridden hyper-capitalist future—one where the entire earth is coated in grey plastic to seal in the radiation from nuclear pollution, and cyborg men (whose humanity is literally held together by a few strips of flesh) with strongholds wage perpetual war on their neighbors for the sake of, uh… war. And a bit of good-natured competition, of course. Metal flowers are pushed from holes in the ground, the atmosphere is artificially coloured (and flavoured!), and the lowly commoners are forced to live their lives inside tiny bubbles. It is also a HYPER masculine world where women are reduced to literal sex robots with on and off switches, and the ones that begin to develop free will get cordoned off to the White Witch Valley, where they essentially become another faction to wage war with. I know that sounds jarring if you are at all a reasonable, normal person, but it’s done in a way that is so obviously a damning critique of the toxic masculine psyche that Bunch manages to pull it off without it ever feeling like misogyny is the butt of the joke.
What Bunch does extremely well in these stories is represent a stronghold as not only a physical space with 11 steel walls adorned with turrets and cannons, but also a mental space of isolation—an ideological stronghold of violence and hate that is deeply rooted in fear and insecurity. The world of Moderan is hypermasculine and constantly at war, but the Stronghold Masters are cowards (I believe our main character is also a cuckold, lol). They hide in their metal peep boxes at the center of all their walls, flipping switches to shoot bombs at their enemies while their grunts suffer the casualties. But these Stronghold Masters also show a strict adherence to the rules: truces are respected and can be called at any time; warring strongholds will often help each other get back up when they are knocked down just so that they can get back to shooting each other for profit and entertainment again. The way Bunch represents the bullshit orchestrated façade of world relations is both uncannily accurate and hilariously absurd; he strips down all of these systems of governance and the fragility of the male psyche to their bare foundations and then laughs at them heartily.
Bunch’s approach to satire and absurdity is further aided by his prose, which is highly free-form and experimental, often prioritizing DRAMATIC EFFECT! over coherence. Bunch writes very abstractly and often uses improper grammar on purpose (because FUCK rules). I got a good amount of fun out of it, but sometimes it feels like trying to parse the scrawling of a psychosis patient. Some of his paragraphs are dense and hard to follow without feeling like you are being ambushed by word jumbles or bushwhacking your way through a thicket of thorns. This isn’t exactly a problem in and of itself, but when you consider the episodic nature of this collection and the fact that all the stories are only a few pages long (and often spend the first one or two of those pages recapping the same information), you can see how it might become tedious. My enjoyment of this book peaked by the first third and then quickly bottomed out by the final.
So, is Moderan worth reading? It depends on what you are looking for in a book. My advice to you, if you are on the fence about picking this up, is to not approach it like a novel. Leave this collection by the toilet and read it one story at a time at your convenience. Trying to push through the whole thing in a week became so exhausting by the end that I didn’t even bother with the last few pages. I wanted to chuck it into the damn ocean. Does it have literary value despite its annoyances, though? Absolutely. There are so many moments of hilarity, highly intelligent satire, and absolutely buckwild prose, but it is also challenging, especially when you try to speed run it. Don’t do that.
What Bunch does extremely well in these stories is represent a stronghold as not only a physical space with 11 steel walls adorned with turrets and cannons, but also a mental space of isolation—an ideological stronghold of violence and hate that is deeply rooted in fear and insecurity. The world of Moderan is hypermasculine and constantly at war, but the Stronghold Masters are cowards (I believe our main character is also a cuckold, lol). They hide in their metal peep boxes at the center of all their walls, flipping switches to shoot bombs at their enemies while their grunts suffer the casualties. But these Stronghold Masters also show a strict adherence to the rules: truces are respected and can be called at any time; warring strongholds will often help each other get back up when they are knocked down just so that they can get back to shooting each other for profit and entertainment again. The way Bunch represents the bullshit orchestrated façade of world relations is both uncannily accurate and hilariously absurd; he strips down all of these systems of governance and the fragility of the male psyche to their bare foundations and then laughs at them heartily.
Bunch’s approach to satire and absurdity is further aided by his prose, which is highly free-form and experimental, often prioritizing DRAMATIC EFFECT! over coherence. Bunch writes very abstractly and often uses improper grammar on purpose (because FUCK rules). I got a good amount of fun out of it, but sometimes it feels like trying to parse the scrawling of a psychosis patient. Some of his paragraphs are dense and hard to follow without feeling like you are being ambushed by word jumbles or bushwhacking your way through a thicket of thorns. This isn’t exactly a problem in and of itself, but when you consider the episodic nature of this collection and the fact that all the stories are only a few pages long (and often spend the first one or two of those pages recapping the same information), you can see how it might become tedious. My enjoyment of this book peaked by the first third and then quickly bottomed out by the final.
So, is Moderan worth reading? It depends on what you are looking for in a book. My advice to you, if you are on the fence about picking this up, is to not approach it like a novel. Leave this collection by the toilet and read it one story at a time at your convenience. Trying to push through the whole thing in a week became so exhausting by the end that I didn’t even bother with the last few pages. I wanted to chuck it into the damn ocean. Does it have literary value despite its annoyances, though? Absolutely. There are so many moments of hilarity, highly intelligent satire, and absolutely buckwild prose, but it is also challenging, especially when you try to speed run it. Don’t do that.
Read
December 14, 2018A kaleidoscopic chronicle of a post-human future, in which robot warlords fight endlessly over a plastic landscape. This is more Brave New World than Heinlein, short stories largely free of an overarching narrative, ferocious satire of capitalism, imperialism, etc. It’s held together with this really buoyant, peculiar style of prose, with our robot-warlord antihero speaking in this clipped, imbecilic vernacular. It probably would stand stronger at about 200 pages instead of 350, but it’s still unique and weird and worth your time.
November 11, 2019
I have not entered a "read" date because I just can't finish it. I will try...but it's become a complete chore. In short form...it's a great read. Very unique and detailed writing that really has no comparison. The narrator blasts out mechanical thoughts of mainly violence with a two-note range that even Morrisey would mock. It does suffer a bit from a certain timeliness that sort of dates it. Awkward sentence for sure - and to clarify - it's a bit wooden and someone covered the wood in 70s shag carpeting. I am admittedly a NYRB fan and will give anything they release a fair shot. This however.....241 pages and I'm tap tap tap tap tapping out for now. This was written in serialized form - and I think it should have stayed that way. Reading it all in a lump becomes and exercise in torture for me at least. For example - I think Bunch writes "hip-snuggie chair" about 200 times and now I want to throw out my lounge chair. It's rare for me to want to cannon-blast a book to the next town over, especially one with a Pavel Tchelitchew cover...but this had me frothing. It's not stupid pandering like Stephan Zweig, or idiotic drivel like...well I'll stop the vitriol there. Bunch is a smart and competent writer but the results are too mechanical. Banausic would be the word I think...merely mechanical. He makes his point and points in full detail about four stories in....the rest are like the later entries into a thrash-metal band's catalog...they've said it all already and saying it more really does nothing except to dull the blade that already made its cuts. I will admit - I generally do not read sci-fi...I'm not against it...but it just doesn't keep my attention. I'd suggest buying this for the cover and the first few stories. If you need room on your shelves - just rip off the cover and first few chapters. You'll have all of what you need at that point. Kudos to NYRB for this brave release.
January 8, 2025
How you'll respond to this collection of linked short stories (really fables) will depend a great deal on your ability to stare unflinchingly on the abyss, as the author was on a mission to afflict the comfortable and rub their noses in the rottenness of High Cold War America. That said I'm going to diverge somewhat from Jeff VanderMeer's enthusiastic introduction, where he credits David Bunch with the poetics of E.E. Cummings, the inventiveness of Philip K. Dick and the sense of body horror of Clive Barker, while at the same time celebrating that there's not been anything like this body of work before or since it's been written.
As for myself I see a body of work that is part of the dystopian literature of the apex of Cold War nuclear terror and needs to be located in that period. I would also compare Bunch's work to the satirical fiction of Frederick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth at their most acid with a certain literary gloss, or perhaps to Kurt Vonnegut with a more decided commitment to being genre science fiction. As for whether these stories are period pieces, or news that remains news, well, we are still afflicted with leaders suffused with the hubris, vain-glory, and sense of denial that Bunch excoriated and the dread of dehumanization and the destruction of the natural world Bunch invoked still stalks our imaginations, so yes; these stories are still worth the investment of your time.
Originally written: May 8, 2019.
As for myself I see a body of work that is part of the dystopian literature of the apex of Cold War nuclear terror and needs to be located in that period. I would also compare Bunch's work to the satirical fiction of Frederick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth at their most acid with a certain literary gloss, or perhaps to Kurt Vonnegut with a more decided commitment to being genre science fiction. As for whether these stories are period pieces, or news that remains news, well, we are still afflicted with leaders suffused with the hubris, vain-glory, and sense of denial that Bunch excoriated and the dread of dehumanization and the destruction of the natural world Bunch invoked still stalks our imaginations, so yes; these stories are still worth the investment of your time.
Originally written: May 8, 2019.
February 11, 2019
Bunch was not celebrated much during his lifetime, but this is a clearly prescient collection of short fiction based around his world, Moderan. Modern is covered in plastic, with a vapor shield, where men replace their organic skin parts with metal. Both a commentary on toxic masculinity and environmental concerns, Moderan is a great example of a complete world full of strange and funny vignettes of this bizarre world. There are quite a few contemporary examples, it's like Terminator meets Tetsuo but with this Burroughs like humor, it's pretty unique. The forward by Jeff Vandermeer is also pretty good too.
November 8, 2015
Thanks to Justin Isis for the recommendation.
July 11, 2022
What a quirky little number this is.
Most of the world has been coated in thick plastic, through which metal flowers and trees are pushed according to season, and over which metal birds fly. The ultimate social position a man -and it is only men - any women with such designs are banished into a walled and guarded valley out of the way- can attain is to become/ command a stronghold, from which he spends his days launching barrage after barrage of exotic weaponry against his neighbours in a continuing bid to attain Ultimate Stronghold (or something). But the more humanity tries to divorce itself from nature (and, indeed, sense and reason), the more nature keeps rearing Her head.
So, Moderan is allegory. And it's effective allegory, because for all these interconnected stories' age, they remain relevant and sometimes even biting - wars are today waged for pointless reasons, plastic grass is a -popular- thing, interaction is easier done via screens and apps, the natural world is ever more encased by our decidedly unnatural one.
But the presentation of it is maddening. Bunch employs a strange, jolly, almost childish style, full of surprising CAPS, nicknames for objects used as proper names, and lots of repetition. It could, of course, be meant to highlight humanity's waning intelligence, but it's unrelenting through 300+ pages and becomes borderline wearisome.
There is something great to Moderan - like Jeff Vandermeer says in the introduction to my copy, you'll not have read anything quite like this before. But perhaps it's best read in instalments, broken up by something a tad more conventional - not all at once the way I did.
Most of the world has been coated in thick plastic, through which metal flowers and trees are pushed according to season, and over which metal birds fly. The ultimate social position a man -and it is only men - any women with such designs are banished into a walled and guarded valley out of the way- can attain is to become/ command a stronghold, from which he spends his days launching barrage after barrage of exotic weaponry against his neighbours in a continuing bid to attain Ultimate Stronghold (or something). But the more humanity tries to divorce itself from nature (and, indeed, sense and reason), the more nature keeps rearing Her head.
So, Moderan is allegory. And it's effective allegory, because for all these interconnected stories' age, they remain relevant and sometimes even biting - wars are today waged for pointless reasons, plastic grass is a -popular- thing, interaction is easier done via screens and apps, the natural world is ever more encased by our decidedly unnatural one.
But the presentation of it is maddening. Bunch employs a strange, jolly, almost childish style, full of surprising CAPS, nicknames for objects used as proper names, and lots of repetition. It could, of course, be meant to highlight humanity's waning intelligence, but it's unrelenting through 300+ pages and becomes borderline wearisome.
There is something great to Moderan - like Jeff Vandermeer says in the introduction to my copy, you'll not have read anything quite like this before. But perhaps it's best read in instalments, broken up by something a tad more conventional - not all at once the way I did.
December 15, 2018
Someone championed the New York Book Review’s reissue of MODERAN by David R. Bunch. They said it was the best thing since sliced bread or some such mysterious comparison to a just so-so invention. But it’s science-fiction, so I was curious, and weird science-fiction at that, where a post-apocalyptic world (are there any others nowadays?) is ruled by men who have given up most of their flesh for new-metal machinery and engage in constant warfare over a world covered in plastic. These short stories, thankfully most very short, are narrated by one such monster, Stronghold 10, who babbles in a new speak almost as impenetrable as his body armor. In a series of encounters that are bonkers the madness of this new life is riddled with fissures where the old and even something like humanity seep through. It’s crazy. I can’t say it was fun to read but I kind of miss Stronghold 10 shouting in my face about his superiority and love of conflict. An introduction calls the work prescient, only today our apocalypse is global warming not nuclear winter. We do live in a world of Stonghold 10s, screaming insanely to our indifferent, dull or frustrated ears all the time. Their language, too, is strange and alien. But it’s harder to see the humanity. If only Bunch was still alive, he could be their speechwriter.
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