The Gernsback Continuum
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta [a noted pop-art historian] was the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she called "American Streamlined Modern." Cohen called it "raygun Gothic." Their working title was The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was."--"The Gernsback Continuum" (1981) by William Gibson |
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"The Gernsback Continuum" is a 1981 science fiction short story by American-Canadian author William Gibson, originally published in the anthology Universe 11 edited by Terry Carr. It was later reprinted in Gibson's collection Burning Chrome, and in Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling. With some similarity to Gibson's later appraisal of Singapore for Wired magazine in Disneyland with the Death Penalty, as much essay as fiction, it depicts the encounters of an American photographer with the period futuristic architecture of the American 1930s when he is assigned to document it for fictional London publishers Barris-Watford, and the gradual incursion of its cinematic future visions into his world. The "Gernsback" of the title alludes to Hugo Gernsback, the pioneer of early 20th century American pulp magazine science fiction.
Plot summary
Assigned to photograph 1930s period futuristic American architecture by London publishing figures Cohen and Dialta Downes, an American photographer begins to enter the worlds of his subject with increasing vividness. Characterised by Downes as 'American Streamlined Moderne', a "kind of alternate America...A 1980 that never happened, an architecture of broken dreams", or what Cohen calls 'Raygun Gothic', his encounters with a world of California gas stations, fifth run movie houses likened to "the temples of some lost sect", a utopian 'continuum' of flying wings and air cars, multi-lane highways, giant zeppelins and Aryan, distinctly American inhabitants, lead him to hallucination as the scenes of the period spill into reality. His US agent Kihn attributes this to what he calls 'semiotic ghosts', the remnants of mass culture in the collective unconscious, and advises immersion in a pulp diet of pornography and TV. In references to the architecture of Nazi Germany, the Hitler Youth and period sci-fi like Flash Gordon, Fritz Lang and H. G. Wells, the modernist vistas of the 'golden age' are contextualized in period political visions as the protagonist clings to a familiar and preferred postmodern present. Having completed the job, Barris-Watford's hired photographer retreats to San Francisco and books a plane to New York, still trying to rid himself of the nightmare vision in the current disasters of global news. An attendant tells him that the world scene “could be worse.” The photographer replies, “Or even worse, it could be perfect.”
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