Zapf.punkt 7 Autumn E quinox 2020 Future Invisible zapf.punkt 7 ein schlag ins Gesicht des Weltraums 3 Million Volt Lottery Ticket 4 The Invisible with Seb Doubinsky 9 Harry O's Volvo P-1800 10 Dream's Edge - Future Planet 18 Decolonizing the Future - con report cover: Mystique & Grand Canyon photo (c) Joe Jiang. banner: Věra Chytilová in the galaxy, collage by Lex Berman. editorial: page 3 Plex:Eat (c) Christophe Gernigon Studio photo : page 9 (c) Harry O. Morris, used with permission. back cover: expedição ancestral (c) Mavi Morais Zapf.Punkt Quarterly, No.7 (Sep 2020) Publisher : Diamond Bay Press. Editor: Merrick Lex Berman. Contact email: [email protected] Mailing Address: PO Box 380968, Cambridge, MA, 02238. Copyright: Entire contents (c) 2020 by Merrick Lex Berman. Rights hereby released to all contributors. Nothing may be reproduced or otherwise distributed without permission of the author(s). Million Volt Lottery Ticket 2020 will be remembered as the year of the long pause, when the churning madness of humanity was forced to chill out. Are we only dreaming of an idyllic calm? During this all-too-short moment for rediscovering our environs and ourselves... Or will we remember this year by the scream of madmen, swinging like wrecking balls through the entire fabric of reality? Now the crows are crying over the marsh. The green reeds are fading to yellow. With confidence, the witches are weaving and stitching spells into sachet. The metalsmiths are hammering red-hot metal into blades. Yarrow stalks are being tossed under the slanting sun, where they tumble down beside the I-ching. Smell the steam wafting up from hot coffee? Perserverence furthers. zapf.punkt 7 p. 4 we know as nations are all replaced by imaginary city-states. and in The Invisible, I wanted to make a strange familiarity, using a lot of references that could be transparent or seen in different ways. Lex: In the Song of Synth, the action takes place in the cities of New Viborg and Samarqand. Those cities had both familiar elements and also pure fantasy. But Song of Synth is more of a druggie book, where the strange drug, synth, is experienced by the characters more fully. Whereas in The Invisible synth is kind of a wierd element floating in the background around the main character who is a cop, a police officer. from Occult Detective Tarot (c) Bob Freeman Seb: the main character, Ratner, was in the Seb Doubinsky on first story that opened my series of books in the city-states cycle. With The Invisible I Diamond Bay Radio didn't want the reader to be challenged, as much as in the Song of Synth, with its druggie thing, and with the drug-induced It was great fun to catch up with Seb hallucinations. I wanted Ratner to be Doubinsky and talk about his latest novel, challenged ethically, in many ways, and The Invisible (from Meerkat Press, 2020). poetically. I wanted him to be asking questions about what drugs are and about Full audio interview on Diamond Bay politics. Like what degree of corruption is Radio: https://tinyurl.com/yyaevuoq corruption? Lex: What is it with The Invisible? Is it a cozy weird novel? Lex: As City Commissioner, Ratner gets involved in investigating synth, where it's Seb: I thought about it as a take on coming from and about it's influence on classical noir in novels and films. My society. He begins to theorize about what books, including the Song of Synth, are all synth is. Was it even a commodity, are quite different in style. they all take place they trying to sell it? Or were they just in the same imaginary setting, where what trying to get people to open up their minds zapf.punkt 7 p. 5 and change, politically and socially. As if the corruption you're writing about in The synth was a kind of an experiment. Invisible almost looks mild by comparison. Seb: You've got a point here! People get Seb: There are drugs that influence my murdered for very little. vision of Synth. LSD of course. But the LSD experiments in the 60s and 70s were Lex: Going back to the main character, started as a government drug; and then Ratner, he's a big appreciator of the that whole thing kind of exploded in their Underground culture. he feels as though he face. And also in our youth there was wouldn't know the city at all if he was ecstasy. I don't know if you remember all some square, who didn't get into the music, the rumors going around about ecstasy in and the food, the wine bars, and all the the 80s and the early 90s? other things going on around town. Lex: I was thinking of synth more in terms of the so-called designer drug movement Seb: I'm interested in ambivelent in the 80s. I think of that as the same as characters. I love the ambivelence and the ecstasy period. There had been a lot of ambiguities and contradictions that people use of pharmeceutical drugs, but people have. I wanted to create a character, who started to design their own recreational was a cop, so he had to work within the drugs. system. But I would say he's an intelligent cop. One of those who is dedicated to Seb: And then there were the raves. With something and who brings something to the raves going on, every time someone society, and who is not just into vigilante died by ecstasy or LSD it became a whole oppression. Although he knows that it thing in the news. But if you compare the exists and is part of the overall picture. number of deaths by ecstasy to heroin... The book opens with Ratner becoming City Lex: It's next to zero. It's very low. Commissioner, which is the highest position in the police force. and he knows Seb: And yet it was much more publicized! why he's there. it's not because of his qualities, which are there, but it's because Lex: Well it was literally a war on drugs. of politics and the symbol that he and the guys who were waging the war represents. were running the drugs up and down Central America to fund death squads. I was thinking in terms of the end of the Roman Empire, when the emperors were Seb: Exactly! To finance weapons. actually mercenaries. I'm fascinated by these guys who took power to save Rome. Lex: the world was so upside down then! That's what Ratner is doing. Because if it's zapf.punkt 7 p. 6 not him, the other person who would be in Seb: Yes, and they are trying to save his shoes would be absolutely terrifying! culture. To protect freedom through culture. They could be seen as naive Lex: When Ratner's former partner, Jesse clowns, or some very important people. I Valentino, is found stabbed to death; that's wanted to keep that ambiguity there, so when the whole case starts spinning up in they are both clowns and very important to something bigger. people. Seb: Although I wrote The Invisible, I'm not Lex: About Ratner, he's kind of comfortable, really a conspiracy theorist or fanatic. his friends have all become successful as What I wanted to do was to drag my artists and writers, and he can go to these character into a conspiracy theory. Where nice cafes and have long lunches with there are elements that could prove that them. there's a huge conspiracy going on. And yet, he's a very skeptical person. I wanted This is in a contrast to the main character to make The Invisible play out as a tension, of Song of Synth, Markus, who was a a network, where everything and it's hacker. Markus has a moment frozen in his opposite are said at the same time. head when he was captured by the police and his relationships were destroyed, when Lex: The name itself, Invisible, refers to an he became a traitor to his friends. And then invisible force, and a secret group of poetry he had to work for the police to save his appreciators who have a mission to watch own ass, even though he had to live with things. When poets are getting murdered, an ankle bracelet, subsumed by his status for example, that means to them that the as a criminal. That was pretty intense! world is going into a bad phase. and they watch out for these signs. In a way they But Ratner, on the other hand, is more have a conspiracy theory, and yet they're mellow, the sort of person you'd want to just this funny group of people who love hang out with at the Robespierre Cafe. poetry. zapf.punkt 7 p. 7 amount of time if you are open to new Seb: It was written with that intention. I ideas and new experiences. Not necessarily wanted Ratner to be a likeable character. I induced by LSD. But just relax! And try to wanted even people who are anarchists like figure out what is going on. me to be comfortable with Ratner, as a cop. And the second thing, which was very Seb: As a punk I was more into important, is that he never has a gun. amphetamines and all that hard stuff. For my children I don't want them to be naive, Putting Ratner in that very difficult but I also don't want them to be scared.