by Jeter, K W
She nodded. “We’ll hear him as soon as he comes on.” Staring out the window. “I keep hoping that he’ll be ... different now.” She turned her face to look at him. “What are your plans?” she asked quietly.
“I should go back to Phoenix,” he said, meeting and holding her level gaze. “There’s not much left for me here. If anything.” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. Everything’s possible now.”
Outside, beyond the alleys, the noises grew louder.
Dr. Adder sat behind a dust-covered desk in one of the empty warehouse’s cubicles, next to the one that still held Melia’s body. A pair of cans that had once held peaches, grown long ago somewhere else, and now containing only clear syrup, sat on the desktop.
I wonder whatever became of my motorcycle, thought Adder, leaning back in the chair and planting his feet between the empty cans. Probably still up there where I dropped it outside Betreech’s place. Covered with mold by now, lichens on the tank and fungus sprouting from the leather.
A person he had never seen before appeared in the doorway of the cubicle. He looked as if he had been once, long ago, a stocky, even portly figure, but had condensed with accumulating age, the network of fine lines on his face absorbing the excess. He lugged a large black suitcase with him.
“How,” said Adder, looking at the apparition in mild curiosity, “did you get past that Milch character out there?”
“He’s one of my most faithful listeners,” said the ancient figure, smiling at him.
“KCID,” said Adder, recognizing the voice. “So you’re it.”
“That’s right,” the old man said. He lifted the case onto a corner of the desk and opened it. “Portable, self-contained transmitter,” he said, noticing Adder’s small interest. “One of Lester Gass’ lesser known devices. I found it here in L.A.; been using it for my own purposes for years.” He winked at Adder. “Right, radioland?”
“So what the fuck do I want with it?”
The old man pulled out a microphone from inside the case and held it before himself. “They’re all waiting, Dr. Adder,” he announced dramatically into the device. A red rectangle marked ON THE AIR glowed inside the case. “All your old fans, and everyone else, who never worshipped you until now. All through the streets of L.A., and even in the smoking ruins of Orange County, people are clustered around radios, waiting to hear you, back from the dead. I broadcast the announcement earlier that you’d be with me today. The word has reached everyone, I assure you.” He paused. “What do you have to tell them, Dr. Adder?”
Adder gazed into the withered face for a silent moment. There was no mockery there; he saw that the old man was just doing his self-appointed job in the best way he could. And that he knew already.
“Yeah,” said Adder finally, grinning and swinging his feet off the desktop. He reached for the microphone. Everyone; L.A., Orange County, the whole world. “Yeah, I’ve got something to say to them.”
AFTERWORD
—Philip K. Dick
“Sir, you have written a dirty book, sir!”
Which writer does Mrs. Grundy have in mind now? James Joyce for his masterpiece ULYSSES? Or Henry Miller for his two TROPICS novels? The shriek of dismay from the prudes of the world is eternal. And this shriek has prevented the publishing of K. W. Jeter’s extraordinary novel DR ADDER for literally years—until a courageous publisher finally stepped forth and said,
“We’ll publish it.”
I did not know K. W. Jeter when I first read DR ADDER in 1972. The well-known figure in science fiction academic circles Dr. Willis McNelly brought me the manuscript and said, “One of the students wrote this. I think it’s good. I’d like to know what you think.” And left it with me to read.
If there’s one thing I hate it’s having novels brought to me to read... because, frankly, there are so few novels these days that are worth reading. I must admit I considered reading this manuscript an imposition—until I read the first third of it, and having read that first third of DR ADDER my life was permanently changed. Here was not just a good novel; here was a great novel. It picked up where the dazzling power of the DANGEROUS VISIONS stories (in Harlan Ellison’s anthologies) had left off. Very simply, it is a stunning novel and it destroys once and for all your conception of the limitations of science fiction. This is, of course, why so many years had to pass before it saw print. It’s not dirty. Mrs. Grundy is wrong. Yes, it deals not only with sexual perversions but with fantastic sexual perversions: dreams of sexual perversions which are dreams you and I never supposed existed. But—is a murder mystery usually accused of advocating death? Is a science fiction novel about the end of the world construed by its readers as expressing a desire on the part of the author to see the world end?
Did the movie Jaws advocate biting children in half?
I don’t wish to fall back on the easy statement that DR ADDER was ahead of its time. It wasn’t. It was right on the nose. What was wrong was this: the field of science fiction was behind the times. I have no doubt that if DR ADDER had been published in 1972 it would have been a blockbuster of a commercial success, and what is more, its impact on the field would have been enormous. The field has been growing weak. It has for years become ossified. A stale timidity has crept over it. Endless novels about sword fights and figures in cloaks who perform magic—in other words clones of the Hobbit books— have been cranked out, published, sold, and the field of science fiction has been transmuted into a joke field—certain exceptions to the contrary such as Tom Disch’s CAMP CONCENTRATION and Norman Spinrad’s THE IRON DREAM admitted.
Now, I ask you, aren’t you tired of reading about magic and wizards and little people with turned-up fuzzy feet? Consider this, then: you have been deprived for many years of the opportunity to read powerful, original, daring novels such as DR ADDER. A few months ago I heard a major figure in the science fiction field argue at a lecture that “no good s-f novel ever went unpublished.” How tragically untrue! You, as the reader, must take my word for it: good s-f novels do go unpublished because there are relatively few brave publishers these days. But now DR ADDER is in print and you are holding it in your hands. This fits my personal view of the workings of the universe: the mill of the gods grinds slow, but it will eventually grind out justice. What you now hold in your hands proves it.
I could make a case for the unfair misery that K. W. Jeter has been forced to undergo from 1972 until this publication now, at long last, of DR ADDER, but I think the case that you as the reader have been mistreated is a more important case. However, I think you should know that it is a dreadful experience psychologically to have written a masterpiece, a truly wonderful novel, and then find that no publisher in the United States or England or France (Mr. Jeter even tried France, where almost everything gets published!) will stand up, be counted, face the judgment of history and publish the goddam thing.
Earlier this year I talked to an Editorial Assistant at a certain publisher. “Are you going to publish DR ADDER?” I asked, knowing that they had the manuscript at that moment. He said, “What if we lose our shirt?” To this I said, “History is going to judge you.”
History does judge you, publisher, author and reader alike. Consider this. I myself—I am, in my opinion, defamed in DR ADDER (there is a character, KCID, who is based on me). But as far as I am concerned, this is not important. I have to admit that the portrait of me made me acutely uncomfortable. But which is more important, that I keep my self-serving image going, or that a great novel be published? I tell you this so you will understand how little I have personally to gain by advocating the publishing of DR ADDER. In fact in a sense I have something to lose; I show up in it as a worn-out old fart with scrambled wits. So don’t show up at my door and tell me I’m recommending DR ADDER because I’m a friend of the author. Well, I am a friend of the author; after I read DR ADDER I got to know K. W. and we see a lot of each other. But I am writing this Afterword for you the reader, not for K. W. Jeter. I am writing this to tell you, Forg
et your timid preconceptions of what a science fiction novel should be like. Forget the little people with fuzzy turned-up feet and sword fights on imaginary planets. This novel is about our world and so it is a dangerous novel in the sense that Harlan’s DANGEROUS VISIONS stories were, by and large, dangerous. Which is terrific. This is precisely what we need.
Well, I have rattled on enough; time for you to return to the novel itself. I’d like to add a few words about K. W., however, since I know him so well. He’s a tall, gloomy person with the most brilliant wit of anyone I know (gloomy people usually have the flair for wit). His ex-wife once said that she thought he looked like John Barrymore. I think he looks like Richard the Third, plotting to overthrow everyone ahead of him in line to the royal throne. And in a literary sense K. W. has done precisely this. He has worked and waited years—not to get to the throne of power but to the throne of getting an important and exciting and dramatic and, above all, interesting novel published, against overwhelming odds. He never gave up, although many times his morale dropped to a low ebb. We, his friends, cheered him up as best we could, but, really, only one thing could cheer him. And that one thing is what you hold in your hands now: a published copy of his masterpiece DR ADDER.
Consider yourself warned. This novel is gut-destroying. It is not a creampuff novel; it is not empty sweetness. I enjoyed it. I loved it. Mrs. Grundy is going to run off shrieking when she reads it, but let her run off. James Joyce and Henry Miller survived her, and so will K. W. Jeter. And so will a courageous publisher, whose imprint appears on this book. I wish to thank that publisher. And, above all, I wish to thank K. W. for his valor. And his genius.
—Santa Ana, California
August 1, 1979