David R. Bunch (1925 - May 29, 2000) was an American poet and a writer, mostly known for his surrealist science fiction. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members
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Biography and writing career
Bunch graduated from Central Missouri State University with a BS degree. The University of Central Missouri (formerly Central Missouri State University) is a four-year public institution in Warrensburg Missouri. He received an MA in English from Washington University in St. Louis. He worked as a cartographer for the Defense Mapping Agency in St. Louis until his retirement in 1973.
Bunch wrote over 200 stories and poems genres other than science fiction prior to 1957. In that year he published his first science fiction story, "Routine Emergency", and eventually became an important part of the 1960s New Wave in American science fiction. The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969 New Wave is a term applied to Science fiction writing characterized by a high degree of experimentation both in form and in content and a Highbrow and self-consciously He published over 75 science fiction stories between 1957 and 1997.
Over 40 of Bunch's stories were collected in a book of very short linked stories, Moderan, about a future world dominated by warring robots. A robot is a mechanical or Virtual Artificial agent In practice it is usually an electro-mechanical system which by its appearance or movements Two of the Moderan stories also appeared in Harlan Ellison's seminal anthology Dangerous Visions. Harlan Jay Ellison (born May 27, 1934) is a prolific American Writer of Short stories, Novellas, Teleplays Dangerous Visions (ISBN 0-425-06176-0 was a Science fiction Short story Anthology edited by Harlan Ellison,published in 1967 One of the more memorable stories in the collection is called "The Butterflies Were Eagle-Big That Day", a first person narrative by a human who has been chosen to become a robot. It includes relatively excruciating descriptions of the transformation.
Moderan's short stories are based around future world in which humans have been replaced by machines with an organic core (See Singularity for related themes). The transformation from human to machine is a painful ritual meant to remind the "machine being" of the disadvantage of the human state. Occasional holdovers from the ancient world make their appearance, but more subtle is the holdovers that exist in the minds of the Moderan beings. Mating rituals are performed without understanding, family rituals are devoid of love but not longing. Overall, the desire for combat becomes the primary motivation. Great "strongholds" are built from which obliterating machines are launched and devious trickery employed in seeking other's rarely achieved destruction. A child may be employed to deliver a bomb, a truce may be a gambit to destruction.
In Bunch's world the machine's emptiness reflects and ultimately continues the empty part of the human condition. Extended to eternity, what alternative to combat can hold greater interest, even the contemplation of the number of circles that may fit in a circle, muses one isolated warrior.
Key to the enjoyment of these stories is appreciating Bunch's use of an allusive, dense (and yet sing song) language that requires a moment or two of adjustment, but quickly becomes second nature --"I peered down Evaluator peep-grooves out through new-steel's best Moderan walls; I thumbed all scans up to HIGH-SCAN-ON-SCAN, using SCAN-RAY-SCAN. . . ".
Collectively, they comprise a sort of satire of human conciouness, or a commentary on the universal quality of it. Having been transformed, we remain the same.
Bunch's second collection of stories, Bunch! (1993), was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. The Philip K Dick Award is a science fiction award given annually at Norwescon sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and (since 2005 supported
Works
Collections
- Moderan, Avon Books, 1971
- Bunch!, Broken Mirrors Press, 1993
Poetry
- We Have a Nervous Job, 1983
- The Heartacher and the Warehouseman, San Francisco, Anamnesis Press, 2000, ISBN 0-9631203-7-9
External links
- David R. Bunch at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Locus Magazine obituary
- SFWA obituary and an appreciation by John Novak
- Online bibliography
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