Remembering Siri

Dan Simmons Remembering Siri

Introduction

I'm interested in how few writers cross the osmotic boundaries between science fiction and horror, between genre and what those in genre call mainstream. Or, rather, I should say that I'm fascinated with how many cross and do not return.

Part of it, I think, is the vast difference in states of mind between dreaming the dark dreams of horror and constructing the rational structures of SF, or between tripping the literary light fantastic and being shackled by the gravity of 'serious' fiction. It is hard to do both painful to the psyche to allow one hemisphere to become dominant while bludgeoning the other into submission. Perhaps that's why readership of SF and horror, genre and New Yorker fiction overlap less than one would think.

Whatever the reason, it's a pity that more writers feel constrained sometimes by limitations of talent or interest but more frequently by market considerations and the simple fact that they find success in one field to stay in one genre.

Of course, the exceptions are always interesting. George R.R. Martin moves easily between genres and expectations, rarely repeating, always surprising. Dean Koontz left SF just as he was becoming a star there possibly because he sensed his destiny lay in becoming a supernova elsewhere. Edward Bryant took a 'sabbatical' from SF a few years ago and has been producing world-class horror ever since. Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula K. LeGuin 'graduated' from SF to mainstream acceptance. (To Vonnegut's credit for honesty if nothing else, he allows as to how he gets nostalgic every once in a while, opens the lowest desk drawer where he keeps his old pulp SF efforts, and then urinates into it.) Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood and others write their most memorable fiction in SF, but they deny any association with the field. Neither lady mentions urinating into desk drawers, but one suspects that they would feel a certain pressure on their respective bladders if forced to accept a Hugo or Nebula.

Harlan Ellison simply refused ever to be nailed down to a genre even while he revolutionized them. We all have heard the stories where Ellison suffers the ten-millionth reporter or critic or TV personality who is demanding to know what descriptive word comes before 'writer' in this case. Sci-fi? Fantasy? Horror?

'What's wrong with just… writer?' Ellison says softly in his most cordial cobra hiss.

Well, what's wrong with it is that the semi-literate have feeble but tidy little minds filled with tidy little boxes, and no matter how much one struggles, the newspaper article (or review, or radio intro, or TV superimposed title) will read something akin to 'sci-fi guy says his sci-fi stuff not sci-fi.'

And the next step is for someone to stand up at a convention (sorry, a Con), grab the microphone, and shout 'How come you're always saying in interviews and stuff that you're not just a science fiction writer? I'm proud to be associated with science fiction!' (Or horror. Or fantasy. Or… fill in the blank.)

The crowd roars, righteousness fills the air, hostility lies just under the surface as if you're a black at a Huey Newton rally who's been caught 'passing' revealed as an oreo, or a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto who's been caught helping the Nazis with the railroad timetables, or worse yet, a Dead Head at a Grateful D. concert who's been found listening to Mozart on his Walkman.

I mean, you are at this guy's convention. (Sorry, 'Con.')

How do you explain to the guy gripping the mike that there are a thousand pressures forcing a writer down narrower and narrower alleys agents trying to make you marketable and pulling their hair out because you insist on staying a jump ahead of a readership, publishers trying to shape you into a commodity, editors trying to get you to Chrissakes be consistent for once, booksellers complaining because your new SF novel just came out and it looks silly racked with your World Fantasy Award winning novel (which is really about Calcutta and has no fantasy in it), which, in turn, is next to your Sci-Fi opus and your fat horror novel (it is horror, isn't it? There wasn't any blood or holograms or demon-eyed kids on the cover…) and now… now!… this new book has come out… this thing… and it looks, oh sweet Christ, it looks… mainstream!

How do you explain that every modifier before writer becomes another nail in the coffin of your hopes of writing what you want? What you care about?

So you look at the guy with the mike and you stare down the irate booksellers and you put your editor on hold, and you think I can explain. I can tell them that the one wonderful thing about being a writer is the freedom to explore all venues, the luxury… no, the responsibility… to work with the dreams the Muse sends you, to shape them to the best of your ability and to send them along whether a guaranteed readership is waiting or not; I can explain the compulsion to write a good book whether the cover artist knows what to do with it or not, explain the honor involved in trying new things despite the fact that the manager at the local B. Dalton's has racked your most recent novel in occult non-fiction and asked… no, ordered the distributor not to send any more books written by this obvious schizophrenic. I can explain all that. I can take every single reader, every defensive SF chauvinist and horror fan and snooty New York reviewer and sparrowfart reader of 'serious fiction,' and show them what being a writer means!

And then you look out at the guy with the mike, and you think Nahhh. And you say, 'My next book'll be SF.'

The next story is SF. I loved writing it. I loved returning to this universe when I finally used 'Remembering Siri' as a starting point to write the 1,500 or so pages of HYPERION and THE FALL OF HYPERION.

Oh, and the seed crystal for this tale was the thought one night, while dozing off, What if Romeo and Juliet had lived?

You know Romeo and Juliet? By that sci-fi/fantasy/horror hack who wrote sit-coms and historical soap operas in his spare time?

Watch for the allusions. And the illusions.

I climb the steep hill to Siri's tomb on the day the islands return to the shallow seas of the Equatorial Archipelago. The day is perfect and I hate it for being so. The sky is as tranquil as tales of Old Earth's seas, the shallows are dappled with ultramarine tints, and a warm breeze blows in from the sea to ripple the russet willowgrass on the hillside near me.

Better low clouds and gray gloom on such a day. Better mist or a shrouding fog which sets the masts in Firstsite Harbor dripping and raises the lighthouse horn from its slumbers. Better one of the great sea-simoons blowing up out of the cold belly of the south, lashing before it the motile isles and their dolphin herders until they seek refuge in lee of our atolls and stony peaks.

Anything would be better than this warm spring day when the sun moves through a vault of sky so blue that it makes me want to run, to jump in great loping arcs, and to roll in the soft grass as Siri and I have done at just this spot.

Just this spot. I pause to look around me. The willowgrass bends and ripples like the fur of some great beast as the salt-tinged breeze gusts up out of the south. I shield my eyes and search the horizon but nothing moves there. Out beyond the lava reef, the sea begins to chop and lift itself in nervous strokes.

'Siri,' I whisper. I say her name without meaning to do so. A hundred meters down the slope, the crowd pauses to watch me and to catch its collective breath. The procession of mourners and celebrants stretches for more than a kilometer to where the white buildings of the city begin. I can make out the gray and balding head of my younger son in the vanguard. He is wearing the blue and gold robes of the Hegemony. I know that I should wait for him, walk with him, but he and the other aging council members can not keep up with my young, shiptrained muscles and steady stride. Decorum dictates that I should walk with him and my granddaughter Lira