Free Collected Essays by Rudy Rucker Page A

from the pages a surfing magazine, with the following block of copy circled:
Break down the word “freestyle” and you have two of the most liberating concepts in life. Given such a forum of experimentation and challenge as the Ocean, freestyle becomes a statement limited only by the participant’s mind…Adventurism represents the cutting edge of the freestylist. It requires an individual who is willing to take any risk at any time, subject himself to the demands of the sea, and ignore limitations imposed on him by friends, society, or the conditions…Freestyle is a forum of inner rhythm: what beat do you choose to march to? In all likelihood, that beat, that inner rhythm, projects into our style of living and surfing, and draws our life experiences to us…Each person’s moves and personality blend together to create style. Each person’s style is different. [From an ad in Breakout magazine, December 1986.]
    This ad-copy itself serves as a synchronistic Rosetta stone for the meaning of freestyle. As Marc explicates:
There it is, Rude Dude. The freestyle antifesto. No need to break down the metaphors—an adventurist knows what the Ocean really is. No need to feature matte-black mirrorshades or other emblems of our freestyle culture—hey, dude, we know who we are. No need to either glorify or castrate technology. Nature is the Ultimate. We’re skimming the cell-sea, cresting the waves that leap out over the black abyss of the maybe-death/whatever-that-is. Wet dreams of geometry: the curl of the wave as we carve our turns toward the blue lip, glossing over the shoulder into the turquoise pocket of ecstasy.
    Yeah, baby. Write like yourself.
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    Note on “The Freestyle Antifesto”
    Written 1987.
    Based on Marc Laidlaw’s zine, Freestyle SF , Fall 1987.

    Marc Laidlaw in 1986
    Marc and I ended up publishing four surfing SF stories, “Probability Pipeline,” “Chaos Surfari,” “The Andy Warhol Sand Candle,” and “The Perfect Wave.” You can find these tales in my Complete Stories (Transreal Books, 2012).
    Marc and I tried to convince our fellow Bay Area SF-writers Richard Kadrey, Pat Murphy, and Michael Blumlein that they were freestylists too, but none of them took our wild talk seriously. The problem with freestyle, as a movement, was that it really had no prescriptive program. We were all diverging along our own worldlines.
    One more great quote from Marc. We weren’t having an easy time getting our far-out stories and novels published, and he remarked, “The editors will sink into the tarpits like dinousaurs. With their throats ripped out by a saber-toothed tiger. And I, Rudy, I will be that tiger .”
    In the end, we may not have ripped out anyone’s throats, but Marc got a great job writing the stories for games like Half-Life at the computer-gaming company Valve Software. And he’s still writing a gem-like story now and then. And me? I’m starting in on self-publishing ebooks! Forever freestyle.

What SF Writers Want
    I think some of the appeal of SF comes from its association with the old idea of the Magic Wish. Any number of fairy tales deal with a hero (humble woodcutter, poor fisherman, disinherited princess) who gets into a situation where he or she is free to ask for any wish at all, with assurance that the wish will be granted. Reading such a tale, the reader inevitably wonders, “What would I wish for?” It’s pleasant to fantasize about having such great power; and thinking about this also provides an interesting projective psychological test.
    Some SF stories hinge on the traditional Magic Wish situation—the appearance of a machine (= magic object) or an alien (= magic being) who will grant the main character’s wishes. But more often, the story takes place after the wish has been made…by whom? By the author.
    What I mean here is that, in writing a book, an SF writer is in a position of being able to get any Magic Wish desired. If you want time travel in your book…no problem.