Never take pop culture too seriously – after all, look what happenedto Woody Allen and Paul McCartney. Luckily forus, there’s no betterwriter to prick the vacuum bubble into which too many critics haveretreated than Barry Bayley, whose witty, transsurreal stories haveornamented SF since the early days of New Worlds. We’re particularlypleased to present one of his stories here, because, with novels such as The Zen Gun and The Rod of Light, he is a link between the fine old daysof New Worlds’ trippy gedanken experiments in literary speculativefiction and the ideological gurus of the current radical SF fringe. Here, hedeconstructs the deconstructionists in a sly, intelligent and above allfunny story about the consequences of taking pop lyrics a smidgen too seriously.
xtremely little is known of the period and civilisation to which the artifact belongs. Found as the result of a deep excavation, it may have been thrown on a rubbish tip consisting mainly of organic refuse, which has degraded to a peat-like substance, though the artifact itself is made of an artificial hydrocarbon resistant to attack by bacteria. It is a miracle that it was not chewed to shreds by the excavator, and a second miracle that it was ever noticed.
