The Star-Spangled Future

by Norman Spinrad

  But once the first fatal step was taken, the Superman Syndrome was irreversible. The victim took to wearing the costume all the time. Sooner or later, the stress and strain of reality became too much, and a fugue-state resulted. During the fugue, the victim dyed his hair Superman steel-blue, bought a blue double-breasted suit and steel-rimmed glasses, forgot who he was, and woke up one morning with a set of memories straight out of the comic book. He was Clark Kent, and he had to get back to Metropolis.

  Bad enough for thousands of nuts to waltz around thinking they were Clark Kent. The horrible part was that Clark Kent was the Man of Steel. Which meant that thousands of grown men were jumping off buildings, trying to stop locomotives with their bare hands, tackling armed criminals in the streets and otherwise contriving to commit hara-kiri.

  What was worse, there were so many Supernuts popping up all over the place that everyone in the country had seen Superman at least once by now, and enough of them had managed to pull off some feat of daring—saving a little old lady from a gang of muggers, foiling an inexpert bank robbery simply by getting underfoot—that it was fast becoming impossible to convince people that there wasn’t a Superman.

  And the more people became convinced that there was a Superman, the more people fell victim to the Syndrome, the more people became convinced…

  Funck groaned aloud. There was even a well-known television commentator who jokingly suggested that maybe Superman was real, and the nuts were the people who thought he wasn’t.

  Could it be? Funck wondered. If sanity was defined as the norm, the mental state of the majority of the population, and the majority of the population believed in Superman, then maybe anyone who didn’t believe in Superman had a screw loose…

  If the nuts were sane, and the sane people were really nuts, and the nuts were the majority, then the truth would have to be…

  “Get a hold of yourself, Funck!” Dr. Felix Funck shouted aloud. “There is no Superman! There is no Superman!”

  Funck scooped the comics back into the drawer and pressed a button on his intercom.

  “You may send in the next Supertwitch, Miss Jones,” he said.

  Luscious Miss Jones seemed to be blushing as she ushered the next patient into Dr. Funck’s office.

  There was something unsettling about this one, Funck decided instantly. He had the usual glasses and the usual blue double-breasted suit, but on him they looked almost good. He was built like a brick outhouse, and the steel-blue dye job on his hair looked most professional. Funck smelled money. One of the powers of Supershrink, after all, was the uncanny ability to instantly calculate a potential patient’s bank balance. Maybe there would be some way to grab this one for a private patient…

  “Have a seat, Mr, Kent,” Dr. Funck said. “You are Clark Kent, aren’t you?”

  Clark Kent sat down on the edge of his chair, his broad back ramrod-straight. “Why, yes, Doctor!” he said. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve seen your stuff in the Metropolis Daily Planet, Mr. Kent,” Funck said. Got to really humor this one, he thought. There’s money here. That dye job’s so good it must’ve set him back fifty bucks! Indeed a job for Supershrink! “Well, just what seems to be the trouble, Mr, Kent?” he said.

  “It’s my memory, Doctor!” said Clark Kent. “I seem to be suffering from a strange form of amnesia!”

  “So-o…” said Felix Funck soothingly. “Could it possibly be that… that you suddenly found yourself in New York without knowing how you got here, Mr. Kent?” he said.

  “Why that’s amazing!” exclaimed Clark Kent. “You’re one hundred percent correct!”

  “And could it also be,” suggested Felix Funck, “that you feel you must return to Metropolis immediately? That, however, you can find no plane or train or bus that goes there? That you cannot find a copy of the Daily Planet at the out-of-town newsstands? That, in fact, you cannot even remember where Metropolis is?”

  Clark Kent’s eyes bugged. “Fantastic!” he exclaimed. “How could you know all that? Can it be that you are no ordinary psychiatrist, Dr. Funck? Can it be that Dr. Felix Funck, balding, harried head of a ward in a great metropolitan booby-hatch is in reality… Supershrink?”

  “Ak!” said Dr. Felix Funck.

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Funck,” Clark Kent said in a warm, comradely tone, “your secret is safe with me! We superheroes have got to stick together, right?”

  “Guk!” said Dr. Felix Funck. How could he possibly know? he thought. Why, he’d have to be… ulp! That was ridiculous. Get a hold of yourself, Funck, get a hold of yourself! Who’s the psychiatrist here, anyway?

  “So you know that Felix Funck is Supershrink, eh?” he said shrewdly, “Then you must also know that you can conceal nothing from me. That I know your Secret Identity too.”

  “Secret Identity?” said Clark Kent piously. “Who me? Why everyone knows that I’m just a meek, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan—”

  With a savage whoop, Dr. Felix Funck suddenly leapt halfway across his desk and ripped open the shirt of the dumbfounded Clark Kent, revealing a skin-tight blue uniform with a red “S” insignia emblazoned on the chest. Top-notch job of tailoring too, Funck thought approvingly.

  “Aha!” exclaimed Funck. “So Clark Kent, meek, mild-mannered reporter, is, in reality, Superman!”

  “So my secret is out!” Clark Kent said stoically. “I sure hope you believe in Truth, Justice and the American way!”

  “Don’t worry, Clark old man. Your secret is safe with me. We superheroes have got to stick together, right?”

  “Absolutely!” said Clark Kent. “Now about my problem, Doctor…”

  “Problem?”

  “How am I going to get back to Metropolis?” asked Clark Kent. “By now, the forces of evil must be having a field day!”

  “Look,” said Dr. Funck. “First of all, there is no Metropolis, no Daily Planet, no Lois Lane, no Perry White, and no Superman. It’s all a comic book, friend.”

  Clark Kent stared at Dr. Funck worriedly. “Are you feeling all right, Doctor?” he asked solicitously. “Sure you haven’t been working too hard? Everybody knows there’s a Superman! Tell me, Dr, Funck, when did you first notice this strange malady? Could it be that some childhood trauma has caused you to deny my existence? Maybe your mother—”

  “Leave my mother out of this!” shrieked Felix Funck. “Who’s the psychiatrist here, anyway? I don’t want to hear any dirty stories about my mother. There is no Superman, you’re not him, and I can prove it!”

  Clark Kent nodded his head benignly. “Sure you can, Dr. Funck!” he soothed.

  “Look! Look! If you were Superman you wouldn’t have any problem. You’d—” Funck glanced nervously about his office. It was on the tenth floor. It had one window. The window had steel bars an inch and a quarter thick. He can’t hurt himself, Funck thought. Why not? Make him face reality, and break the delusion!

  “You were saying, Doctor?” said Clark Kent.

  “If you were Superman, you wouldn’t have to worry about trains or planes or buses. You can fly, eh? You can bend steel in your bare hands? Well then why don’t you just rip the bars off the window and fly back to Metropolis?”

  “Why… why you’re absolutely right!” exclaimed Clark Kent. “Of course!”

  “Ah…” said Funck. “So you see you have been the victim of a delusion. Progress, progress. But don’t think you’ve been completely cured yet. Even Supershrink isn’t that good. This will require many hours of private consultation, at the modest hourly rate of a mere fifty dollars. We must uncover the basic psychosomatic causes for the—”

  “What are you talking about?” exclaimed Clark Kent, leaping up from the chair and shucking his suit with blinding speed, revealing a full-scale Superman costume, replete with expensive-looking scarlet cape which Funck eyed greedily.

  He bounded to the window. “Of course!” said Superman. “I can bend steel in my bare hands!” So saying, he bent the inch-and-a-quarter steel bars in
his bare hands like so many lengths of licorice whip, ripped them aside and leapt to the windowsill.

  “Thanks for everything, Dr. Funck!” he said. “Up! Up! And away!” He flung out his arms and leapt from the tenth-floor window.

  Horrified, Funck bounded to the window and peered out, expecting to see an awful mess on the crowded sidewalk below. Instead:

  A rapidly-dwindling caped figure soared out over the New York skyline. From the crowded street below, shrill cries drifted up to the ears of Dr. Felix Funck.

  “Look! Up there in the sky!”

  “It’s a bird!”

  “It’s a plane!”

  “It’s SUPERMAN!!”

  Dr. Felix Funck watched the Man of Steel execute a smart left bank and turn due west at the Empire State Building. For a short moment, Dr. Funck was stunned, nonplussed. Then he realized what had happened and what he had to do.

  “He’s nuts!” Felix Funck shouted. “The man is crazy! He’s got a screw loose! He thinks he’s Superman, and he’s so crazy that he is Superman! The man needs help! This is a job for SUPERSHRINK!”

  So saying, Dr. Felix Funck bounded to the windowsill, doffed his street clothes, revealing a gleaming skin-tight red suit with a large blue “S” emblazoned across it, and leapt out the window screaming “Wait for me, Superman, you pathetic neurotic, you, wait for me!”

  Dr. Felix Funck, who is, after all, in reality Supershrink, turned due west and headed out across the Hudson for Metropolis, somewhere beyond Secaucus, New Jersey.

  Introduction to

  The Entropic Gang Bang Caper

  Written in England under the influence of the “condensed novels” of J. G. Ballard and the “programmed” humorous fiction of John T. Sladek and first published in New Worlds, “The Entropic Gang Bang Caper” is probably the most thoroughly and forthrightly experimental and “New Wave” piece I’ve ever written. Funny how my whole image in certain quarters apparently seems based upon this obscure 1500 word story.

  Okay, all you Second Foundationeers, this is as hard-core a “New Wave” story as you’re going to get to gnash your teeth over in this book. The real stuff, the kind pseudo-intellectuals like!

  Near as I can make out, what the hard core English “New Wave” school was trying to do was replace the notion of linear plot entirely and create fiction which the reader experienced not as a “story” but as a succession of interpenetrating images. Think of it as fiction formally organized like film. Montage replaces plot as the organizing principle. Since what the reader is experiencing is montage and not story, you don’t necessarily need continuing characters, or indeed characters at all. Meaning is conveyed by or arises from the juxtaposition of images, of slices of realities. The prose glides lightly and allusively over the phenomenological surface while what depth there is comes from the interaction of the readers’ own various minds with the ambiguity of what’s on paper.

  Condense it as far as possible. Ballard’s “condensed novels” really are full formal novels in miniature when they work, multifaceted fictional realities.

  John Sladek was doing his separate weirdness. He was “writing” some amusing short stories by taking words and phrases and running them through a syntax program that organized them into sentences, paragraphs, and, by proper choice of input data, into “stories.”

  In “The Entropic Gang Bang Caper,” I tried to combine both processes and carry them a bit further. I concocted a program for assembling story elements, an equation in which each term would be chosen from the appropriate class of “raw footage.” But first I went out and “shot” the raw footage in the typewriter, keeping the assembly scenario in mind. In other words, I went out and shot sequential takes of the classes of prose elements I was going to use, and then edited them with a simple program.

  But I took it even a little further than that. I programmed in a random factor. Every time the program called for a certain class of prose footage, 1 would choose which “take” went in that slot by coin flip. The result is a “condensed novel” written in collaboration with both a program and random chance.

  Yes Virginia, there was a New Wave…

  The Entropic Gang Bang Caper

  PBA THREATENS STRIKE OVER DEMONSTRATION TACTICS

  New York, N.Y. The President of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association threatened to call a general police strike unless all riot police were immediately disarmed, “Armed police have a tough time getting laid at demonstrations,” he explained. “It’s bad for morale.”

  The Arsenal of Entropy

  Some common human phobias include fear of dose spaces, fear of heights, fear of spiders, fear of suffocation, fear of dogs, fear of injury to the eyes, fear of rats, fear of faeces, fear of insects, fear of slime, fear of injury to the genitals, fear of buggery, fear of impotence, fear of a public display of cowardice.

  Scenario One:

  War is any means of breaking the will of the enemy. Violence is a means of waging war. A violence-war breaks the will of the enemy through fear. In a violence-war, the enemy is defeated when his fear of further violence is greater than his fear of the consequences of defeat.

  VIOLENCE IS THE LAST RESORT OF DESPERATE MEN ARE THE LAST RESORT OF VIOLENCE IS DESPERATE RESORT OF THE LAST MEN

  The Arsenal of Entropy

  DMSO is a chemical which when combined with a wide spectrum of liquids will cause the liquid with which it is mixed to be absorbed into the bloodstream, through skin-contact.

  Spray-guns may be purchased on the open market.

  LSD is a colorless, odorless, tasteless liquid which may be introduced into any fluid medium without fear of detection.

  Scenario Two:

  War is any means of breaking the will of the enemy. Revulsion is a means of waging war. A revulsion-war breaks the will of the enemy through disgust. In a revulsion-war, the enemy is defeated when his disgust for further conflict is greater than his fear of the consequences of defeat.

  WAR NEGOTIATIONS SUSPENDED

  Miami Beach, Fla. Negotiations were suspended until next Friday today between the Pentagon and the Military Association of Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen over the unresolved issue of combat coffee-breaks. Although MASSA has accepted the Pentagon proposal of a $2.25 an hour wage-increase for enlisted men, to be spread out over the duration of the next three-year contract, MASSA spokesmen indicated that the Pentagon refusal to grant combat coffee-breaks could lead to an indefinite prolongation of the current strike.

  Regular coffee-breaks have been standard procedure in most other industries for years, MASSA negotiators pointed out, in refusing the Pentagon’s counter-proposal of double-time for night patrols.

  REVOLUTION IS THE OPIUM OF THE INTELLECTUAL CLASS IS THE OPIUM REVOLUTION IS INTELLECTUAL OPIUM IS THE CUSS REVOLUTION OF THE INTELLECTUAL CUSS OPIUM IS THE REVOLUTION.

  Scenario Three:

  War is any means of breaking the will of the enemy. Sour grapes is a means of waging war. A sour-grapes-war breaks the will of the enemy through envy. In a sour-grapes-war, the enemy is defeated when his envy of the pleasures enjoyed by the opponent is greater than his fear of the consequences of defeat.

  The Arsenal of Entropy

  Many men (including police, public officials and military personnel) strongly relish the prospect of sexual intercourse with young, nubile, willing, attractive women. They have been known to abandon more onerous tasks when confronted with the immediate prospect of a good lay. Other men (including police, public officials and military personnel) experience an equivalent reaction at the prospect of sexual congress with young, nubile, willing, attractive men. A small minority of men (including police, public officials, and military personnel) have similar lust for sexual objects such as dogs, goats, or dirty sweatsocks. Science has discovered few men in whom a sexual desire cannot be provoked.

  YOU CAN NEVER FIND A COP WHEN YOU NEED ONE COP A NEED WHEN YOU FIND ONE COP NEVER NEED A COP CAN NEVER FIND YOU WHEN YOU NEED YOU CAN NEVER FIND A NEED WHEN YOU COP ONE

&n
bsp; Scenario Four:

  War is any means of breaking the will of the enemy. Lust is a means of waging war. A lust-war breaks the will of the enemy through tantalization. In a lust-war, the enemy is defeated when his sexual lust for the enemy is greater than his fear of the consequences of defeat.

  SCOTUS RULES ON CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE Washington, D.C.

  The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision today, declared the Constitution Unconstitutional. “There is no provision whatsoever in the Constitution for the Constitution,” the Court decision pointed out.

  The Arsenal of Entropy

  Many human beings experience a violent disgust-reaction when showered with the entrails of freshly-killed animals.

  A violently nauseous man is incapable of violence.

  A variety of readily-obtainable substances provoke an irresistible biological urge to vomit.

  Scenario Five:

  War is any means of breaking the will of the enemy. Love is a means of waging war. A love-war breaks the will of the enemy through desire. In a love-war, the enemy is defeated when his desire to be loved by the enemy is greater than his fear of the consequences of defeat.

  VD EPIDEMIC AMONG POLICE LAID TO HIPPY DEMONSTRATORS VD EPIDEMIC LAID TO POLICE LAID AMONG HIPPY DEMONSTRATORS VD EPIDEMIC AMONG POLICE LAID TO VD EPIDEMIC AMONG HIPPY DEMONSTRATORS LAID TO POLICE VD

  LA COPS MOBBED BY GROUPIES

  Los Angeles, Calif. Three hundred Los Angeles riot police were brutally sexually assaulted today by a screaming mob of several thousand naked fifteen-to-eighteen-year-old groupies. Five rock stars had to be summoned to restore order using charisma and amplified guitars. The management of the Shrine Auditorium threatened to revoke the LAPD’s entertainment license if this outrage were to be repeated.

  “Blue cloth and brass buttons turn me on,” explained the seventeen-year-old President of the Cop-You-Laters, the new fan club which is causing serious concern in anti-government circles. “I just can’t help it, the sight of a nightstick makes me throb inside.”