Subject: Review: THE WILD PALMS READER

From: [email-masked] (Lon Ponschock)
Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 17:16:18 GMT

"... Here compressed into a single
     slim cone of glass was the
     spiritual and mental
     essence of the Pyramids,
     and the Acropolis,
     of all the churches, mosques
     and synagogues of Jerusalem,
     of Notre Dame and Chartres,
     and of those later
     temples of the spirit of human transcendence,
     the studios of Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
     Everywhere that mankind
     had concentrated its power if dreaming."

            from _The Wild Palms Reader_ p. 13

                    THE WILD PALMS READER
               a book review by Lon Ponschock
               copyright 1993 by Lon Ponschock

Volume Edited by Roger Trilling
and Stuart Swezey
St. Martin's Press
130 pages
$ 14.95 US, 19.99 Can

     _The Wild Palms Reader has_ 31 authors who contribute to
this psychohistory of the Oliver Stone miniseries for
television.

     The authors of The Reader are a who's who of the new
cyberspace technology.  They include William Gibson who wrote
_Neuromancer_ the benchmark cyberpunk novel, Norman Spinrad
( _Bug Jack Barron_,) Thomas M. Disch (_Camp Concentration_,)
Pat Cadigan and many others including Japanese manga comics
illustrator Suehiro Maruo.

     The Reader is similar in graphic appearance to the new
magazine called _Wired_, whose letters to the editor column
and editorials feature Internet-style addresses as
signatures.  I suppose the style of The Reader is only
natural since the editor of The Reader is also an editor of
_Details_, a fashion magazine.

     What the reader does is give a psychohistory of all of
the major characters of WILD PALMS.  The history begins in
1945 at the concentration camp of Manazar in California.  The
book is a set of 'documents' in the form of letters,
speeches, press releases, transcribed telephone
conversations, proposals for grants and scientific papers on
the technology and pharmacopoeia of the world of Wild Palms.
It shows a complex set of interactions involving the new
technology, mind enhancing (smart) drugs, and politics which
become the world that we merely glimpse in the television
miniseries.

    It is our world, of course.

    We are told that The Reader  "...is not a book about the
world of WILD PALMS, it's a book from that world.
It doesn't know it's fiction."

     Highly recommended.
              -----------------------------

lon
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