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Last spring, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America named Neal Barrett, Jr., the 2010 Author Emeritus. I was honored to be asked to introduce him at SFWA’s Nebula Awards Banquet in Cocoa Beach, Florida. The following editorial is a slightly revised version of my remarks. Neal’s latest story can be found on page 26. (Click here for excerpt.)
Possum Dark watched the van disappear into the shop. He felt uneasy at once. His place was on top. Keeping Ginny from harm. . . . Dog locked the gate and turned around. Didn’t come closer, just turned.
“I’m Dog Quick, he said folding hairy arms. “I don’t care much for Possums.”
“I don’t care for Dogs,” said Possum Dark.
Dog seemed to understand. “What did you do before the War?”
“Worked in a theme park. Our Wildlife Heritage. That kind of shit. What about you?”
“Security, what else? Dog made a face. “Learned a little electrics. . . . He nodded toward the shop. “You like to shoot people with that thing?”
“Anytime I get the chance.”
“You ever play any cards?”
“Some.” Possum Dark showed his teeth. “I guess I could handle myself with a Dog.
“For real goods?” Dog returned the grin.
“New deck, unbroken seal, table stakes,” Possum said.
Long before there was the “new weird,” there was Neal Barrett, Jr. The New York Review of Science Fiction called Neal’s 1988 story, “Stairs,” “possibly the most all out weird story of the year.” Being weird didn’t stop “Stairs” from winning that year’s Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The aforementioned Dog Quick and Possum Dark are characters in Neal’s wondrous and strange, “Ginny Sweethips’ Flyin Circus.” The wry tale of life after a nuclear war was a finalist for both the Nebula and the Hugo award. Critics have said that Neal’s stories defy any category or convention, but he has also been called a poet of post-apocalyptic fiction. Neal is not afraid to explore the dark side, but Neal’s versions of what follows Armaggeddon differ considerably from Cormac McCarthy or Neville Shute’s visions of the aftermath. In an interview with Nick Gevers, Neal says, “I write deep and dark, and I write light and funny. And, they’re both the same, in my mind. Tragedy contains funny; funny contains tragedy. Serious things happen to my people, and funny things as well. Like life, okay? The way I write is simply my perspective on whatever the hell this living stuff is all about.”
Neal has always had a keen eye for what this “living stuff” is all about. His 1991 novel, The Hereafter Gang, about Doug Hoover’s transition from life to death, has been called “One of the Great American Novels,” by John Clute. I own the gorgeous Ziezing hardcover with the evocative triptych, and I was calling it one of the greatest novels, ever, long before I became aware of John’s review.
Neal’s career began over fifty years ago, when his first two SF stories appeared in the August 1960 issues of Amazing and Galaxy. Since then, he’s published more than fifty books. In addition to the post-apocalyptic theme that can be found in novels like Through Darkest America and Dawn’s Uncertain Light, and the personal Armageddon of The Hereafter Gang, these works include the “Aldair” quartet and other types of science fiction, Westerns, YA books, very strange mainstream novels like Interstate Dreams, Perpetuity Blues and other short story collections, and wildly funny novels of mystery and suspense like the unforgettable Pink Vodka Blues. Indeed, I often wish I inhabited the alternate universe where Whoopi Goldberg went ahead and made that wonderful book into a movie—with or without Ted Danson.
My first memory of Neal is on an afternoon over twenty years ago. We were surrounded by the lush greenery of The Sun Garden, a bar in the Grand Hyatt in New York City, which overlooks the intricate terra cotta frieze of the Chanin Building, but we could have been anywhere. As the afternoon faded into twilight, I sat enchanted with this eloquent story-telling Texan, who, raised in Oklahoma, still thinks of that state as the last stop before Heaven. I’ve been enchanted by Neal’s stories ever since.
So, when Armageddon arrives, other people can hit The Road or huddle On the Beach. When I face the end times, I’m looking up Ginny Sweethips and taking The Hereafter Gang along with me. Perhaps the end of Doug Hoover’s transcendent journey will give you a little taste of why:
Doug feels the wind, he feels the power in his bones, he hears the wires begin to whine, he hears the engine start to sing. The sky is sharp and clear with a blue that hurts his eyes; the sun’s as bright as silver with a shine. He sees the wonders down below, he sees the hangar and the Cord, he sees the courthouse and the creek, he sees a pretty spot of pink. He sees Immelmann and Manny up above, sees Boelcke and Doc down below. . . . Off to port he sees the Chief looking nifty in his whites, looking fine with his long hair whipping in the breeze. He gives Doug a thumbs up and neatly peels his craft away a white bird against the blue. Doug rolls and feels giddy in the head, feels dizzy as a duck . . .
And as he screams through the sky he wonders what he’d like to be, if the flute would treat him right, if the clarinet’s the thing, if he could tap his way to fame. . . . He thinks he’d really try to learn, discover what it’s all about, why everybody wants to go where it’s nicer than the town.
He thinks . . . he’ll try to understand a cat.
He thinks he might go to class, or maybe not.
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