Talk:Bug Jack Barron

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Edits removed valid information: A lot of good information was removed in a number of recent edits. I have restored a lot of it but wouldn't mind having a discussion about why some things were removed. WikiWhiteRabbit (talk) 04:33, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Where's the controversy?

This article, the Michael Moorcock article, and the New Worlds (magazine) article all agree that Bug Jack Barron was fiercely controversial. But this article has virtually no explanation of that fact.

The synopsis of BJB in this article is very detailed, but it still leaves me guessing about where the controversy was. Various Wikipedia articles offer contradictory explainations:

• The New Worlds (magazine) article says it was explicit sex scenes. That's possible, but by 1969 sex scenes in novels were quite common.
• The Bug Jack Barron article suggests the book was sexist: "Feminist typesetters at New Worlds rejected the story as sexist". But no explanation is given of why this novel was considered sexist, and it's hardly obvious from the synopsis. And it seems bizarre that at New Worlds Books, typesetters were empowered to reject a novel -- at most publishing companies, that's the editor's job, not the typesetter's. (Also, is it really true that only the feminist typesetters rejected the story? Did the non-feminist typesetters then do all the typesetting? This makes very little sense.)
• The Norman Spinrad article says, "With its explicit language and cynical attitude to politicians, it roused one British Member of Parliament's ire at the magazine's partial funding by the British Arts Council." Cynicism toward politicians? How shocking! Cynicism about politicians is completely unknown before 1969 in English literature -- except, of course, in Dickens, Shaw, Chesterton, Orwell, and virtually every novel ever written. And one M.P. mentioned it in a speech, once? Doesn't sound like a big controversy to me.

This controversy needs to be explained. The lede in the Michael Moorcock article says "His publication of Bug Jack Barron by Norman Spinrad as a serial novel was notorious; in Parliament some British MPs condemned the Arts Council for funding the magazine." I'm tempted to remove this statement from the Michael Moorcock article, given how poorly sourced this controversy is, but I wanted to first see if anyone actually knows the story. — Lawrence King ^(talk) 08:08, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree.--Jack Upland (talk) 03:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I can't point to Reliable sources, but I can suggest a few answers to Lawrence King's points above, which may help others to track some sources down. (I was an avid SF reader by the time of the controversy, though not yet active in SF fandom) and both then and over the subsequent 50 years have read and heard various snippets about the affair, including from Norman Spinrad directly, when he was a GoH at a convention I helped run.)

The aspect of the sex scenes in Bug Jack Barron that I think aroused particular distaste (in conservative Great Britain) was that they included sex between white and black participants. Of course, actually saying this would have invited accusations of racism, so it went largely unsaid, though understood, at the time.

In that era typesetters and printers, who were highly unionised, exercised a good deal of unofficial power, which later waned and was largely curtailed by the 1986 Wapping dispute and the rise of Desktop "publishing". New Worlds was a "little magazine", virtually a kitchen table operation, which did not (I'm fairly sure) employ its own typesetters and, if a jobbing print shop decided not to play ball, lacked the resources to engage them in legal dispute even if in the right.

MPs are always ready to whip up a controversy or jump on a bandwagon if they think it will appeal to a significant portion of their constituency. The Commons dispute was, it was widely believed, enough to worry W.H Smith who, in addition to being the largest UK magazine vendor, had a near-monopoly on distribution. Rather than "banning" New Worlds explicitly, they accepted an issue of the magazine on the usual sale-or-return terms but failed to put them on display, and then returned the covers (only, as was customary) of the entire consignment for refund: the blow to New Worlds' precarious cash flow was enough to cease its operation.

I hope that gives some flavour of the zeitgeist around the affair. Hopefully others will be able to contribute more, together with usable sources. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 2.122.0.163 (talk) 18:14, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Any relation to Get Out (film)?

Does anyone know if Jordan Peele has cited this book as an influence on his film, or if Spinrad ever expressed the view that Peele copied his idea? The central sci-fi plot devices of both stories appear to be very similar (i.e., schemes in which biological immortality is offered exclusively to white recipients at the expense of Black victims), so it seems possible that Peele could have gotten his idea from this book. But then, not too many people Peele’s age read 1960s sci-fi, so I’m not sure. 2604:2D80:6984:3800:0:0:0:41EA (talk) 02:42, 19 May 2023 (UTC)