Left two covers from The City, Not Long After; right Pat Murphy reading on the mound.

On Saturday September 28, 2008 science fiction author Pat Murphy read from her book The City, Not Long After at the SF Arts Commission Gallery. This was the third of six events that I produced as part of A Grass Mound (With Kind Regards to Utopia). Below you will find my brief recollection on the event, an interview between Pat Murphy and an MP3 download of Pat’s reading from The City, Not Long After.

There has been a long-standing relationship between grass and science fiction. In Ward Moore’s novel Greener Than You Think, the world is slowly taken over by unstoppable Bermuda Grass. This is the most common grass seen throughout the southern United States. In John Christopher’s The Death of Grass, a plague kills off all forms of grass threatening the survival of the human species. Grass can also be seen as the major signifier of Utopian suburban America, which has been the setting of much critical sci-fi during the 60’s from Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles to Philip K. Dick’s, Time Out of Joint. However when I was programming this event I was not really thinking about the relationships between science fiction and grass, rather I was searching for different perspectives concerning the role that art or creative expression plays in shaping and transforming our cities, and our world. When I read Pat Murphy’s novel The City, Not Long After, I was amazed to discover a novelist who had written a novel in which art, anarchy and creativity are the central themes in a struggle for independence and freedom set within a city in which I am currently living, San Francisco. The novel is post apocalyptic set on earth after a plague has decimated most of the population. San Francisco is now inhabited mostly by artists who transform it into a giant experiential and participatory artwork and who govern the city based on each individuals freedom. When a war general from Sacramento, wishing to unify the country, attacks the city, the artists fight back with non-violent guerrilla art tactics.

On the day of Pat Muphy’s talk the grass had been laying on the mound for almost four weeks without sunlight and probably with less water than it should have, so it was very visibly starting to die. I could have replenished the mound with new grass prior to Pat’s performance but I thought perhaps this half dead, half alive grass could act as a metaphor for potential and struggle. While standing on the mound I asked the assembled audience–quite romantically–to consider that the grass was not dying, that it was dormant. The grass had temporarily suspended its growth, which much grass often does in times of little rain, similar to the state of the grasses on the surrounding hills of San Francisco, growing in our parks, our front yards and between our buildings. I asked them to consider that this grass had potential for growth and renewal, a potential equal to that contained within creative production, which displays alternative ways of being, existing and moving forward.

Click here to download the audio MP3 of Pat Murphy reading from The City, Not Long After
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This interview between Pat Murphy and myself was conducted through email correspondence during a couple of weeks in September 2008.

Anthony Marcellini: One of the most amazing things about The City, Not Long After for me is the large role that art plays within it and the commitment of the characters to art or to creativity. This faith gives the characters not only a more flexible outlook, but also more importantly hope and a yearning to investigating other possibilities. How did art become one of the central themes of the novel?

Pat Murphy: That’s a very big question and it has either a very simple answer or a very long and complex one that would involve telling you most of my life story. I’ll try to walk a middle ground.

My life has long been divided between the world of science and the world of art. In college, I majored in biology and spent my free time writing fiction. In the years since, I have maintained two parallel career tracks: writing about and exploring science, and writing fiction.

For about 20 years, I worked at the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s museum of science, art, and human perception. Frank Oppenheimer, the museum’s founding director, showed me that art and science are two different ways of viewing the world. Both are important; both are valid. Creativity is at the heart of both disciplines. As I see it, life is all about possibilities. Art and science are two paths by which you can explore those possibilities. Science explores using quantitative, analytical tools. Art explores using qualitative, emotional tools. Without either one, you have an incomplete understanding. Add one more element to that: I learned at the Exploratorium that play is part of art and science and creativity. And all three are a vital part of being human and being alive. Given that worldview, art had to be a central theme.

AM: The hope and progressiveness of the characters for me represents the Utopian quality of this novel. I find this an unusual characteristic given that most of the Sci-Fi novels coming out during the late 70’s early 80’s were quite the opposite, quite dystopian. But maybe I am misreading the novel. Would you characterize this novel as utopian or dystopian? Why?

PM: Definitely Utopian. In writing The City, Not Long After, I was imagining (and playing in) a society that works with different rules than the society in which we currently live. The novel takes a positive view of this new society, despite its limitations and flaws. To me, that’s Utopian.

At the heart of the novel is a conflict: in a post-apocalyptic world where the population has been decimated by a plague, the city of San Francisco has been taken over by artists who are remaking it as an art project. An army from Sacramento invades the city, and the artists fight back using art.

It’s the contrast between the worldviews of the artists and the army that intrigues me. The General who heads the invading army is trying to reunify the nation, to restore what he regards as order. He’s not an evil man. In fact, he’s trying to do good.

The artists have a different point of view. As one of them explains in a conversation with the General, “I don’t really like this business of wanting to restore order. I think disorder works just fine. There’s a lot to be said for chaos. It’s a much more creative environment.”

AM: Where would you place this novel within the cannon of Science Fiction? What other novels do you see as having parallel interests concerns?

PM: The Earth Abides by George R. Stuart is the closest parallel. That novel, written by a noted historian, is set in a post-apocalyptic Berkeley.

AM: How did your involvement or work with the San Francisco Exploratorium affect this novel?

PM: I mentioned some of the ways the Exploratorium affected me in my answer to an earlier question. Working at the Exploratorium expanded my understanding of art, science, and collaborative projects. Though many people think of the museum as a science museum, the Exploratorium calls itself a “museum of science, art, and human perception.” Many artists work on staff. Some of the museum’s most popular exhibits are actually art pieces. (These include Bob Miller’s Sun Painting, Ed Tannenbaum’s Recollections, Christian Schiess’ Kinetic Light, and Ned Kahn’s Soap Film Painting.) Interacting with these pieces (and with the artists who created them) changed my view of the world — something characteristic of the best art. The understanding that art can change the viewer — and in doing so, change the world — was pivotal in the creation of The City, Not Long After.

AM: Where did you draw your inspiration for the characters in this novel, particularly the artists Machine, Snake, Danny-Boy and Mercedes?

PM: From myself, from people I know, from artists all over the world.

AM: Where did you draw your inspiration for the artworks in this novel, the hall of mirrors, the blue golden gate bridge, the metal robots etc…? Were they influenced by artworks you had seen around San Francisco or elsewhere?

PM: Some came from specific artworks. The hall of mirrors was inspired by the work of Bob Miller, whose work can be seen at the Exploratorium. The robots were inspired by many Bay Area artists, including Chico MacMurtrie and Mark Pauline.

But most of the art came from my own imagination, operating under the influence of many artists and of the city itself. I’d drive around town and think, “Hmm. I wonder what the artists could do here.” Writing this novel was, in a way, the ultimate in conceptual art. I didn’t have to do the work; I just had to describe the idea.

AM: Did the political climate in 1983-89 have a large influence on the novel, Reagan’s presidency, Margaret Thatcher’s reign, the cold war etc… If so how?

PM: Of course. That was a time when it was particularly difficult to be an artist – and when the end of civilization (as we know it) never seemed far away.

AM: I have only lived in San Francisco off and on since 1998. I was certainly not living in the city in 1983 when you wrote Art in the War Zone. Do you think that this novel was specific to San Francisco in the 80’s? Do you think this novel could be set in this city now or has the city changed from what it was in the early to mid 80’s?

PM: I think the novel is specific to San Francisco, but not to the 80s. The city itself is a character in the novel as well as the setting of the novel. San Francisco is a city of dreams and dreamers, of art and artists. The artists who live here transform the city – and the city transforms its inhabitants.

Though art and the artists have changed since the 80s, the city is still here, still an agent of transformation.

AM: In the afterword you talk about how when this novel was first released it was critiqued as a ‘return to 60’s sensibilities’ for its pacifistic attitudes, optimism and commitment towards considering other ways of living. Is the novel still received in this way or have peoples’ perceptions changed? This seems particularly relevant within an election year in which the words ‘hope’ and ‘change’ are being tossed about so readily.

PM: It’s funny, but I always thought of the book as subversive rather than pacifistic. It’s about changing the way others think by changing their perceptions – and that seems very active and sneaky to me.

I’ve always found subversion to be more interesting than head-on confrontation – whether in times of “hope” and “change” or times of despair. I really don’t have a clue how people are perceiving the book these days. I’ve found it’s often better not to know how people are interpreting my work.

AM: You seem to have tremendous faith in this city to act, as you say, as “an agent of transformation”. What do you think it is about this city, San Francisco, in both its past and its future that makes this transformation possible? Is there anything which you think is an obstruction to this transformation?

PM: I do have faith in San Francisco as an agent of transformation — that’s in its bones, in its DNA, in the history of the place. We’re on the edge of the North American continent, where the ground trembles as great tectonic plates slide beneath the surface. The city was born of the dream of gold — it formed from a gathering of adventurers and mountebanks and cut-throats and entrepreneurs. The history of the American West is filled with characters who created themselves from nothing, writing their own legend and living it until others went along. The Emperor Norton is my favorite, of course. That spirit of self-creation lives on in San Francisco.

A couple of weekends ago, I went out to Ocean Beach where Thom Ross had created an art installation. Back in 1902, Buffalo Bill had brought his Wild West Show to San Francisco. There’s an historic photo of the entire troupe — over 100 Indians on horseback in full regalia — lined up on Ocean Beach. Thom Ross constructed a Wild West Show troupe of 106 life-size Indians on horseback, each one made of plywood and beautifully decorated with fringe and feathers. Ross worked on creating the figures for about two years, which I calculated to be at least one figure a day.

What a fabulous project in all senses of the word— it’s incredible, astonishing, exaggerated — like something out of a fable. It was a glorious, marvelous, and strange, born of the big-dreaming spirit I associate with San Francisco and the West. This artwork would have been perfectly at home in The City Not Long After, and it made my heart glad to see it — I couldn’t stop grinning as I wandered among the figures, admiring the detail work. Which brings me to your question about obstructions to transformation. Some might think that the major obstructions to transformation are practical: lack of money, lack of time. And sure, those are a problem, but not the biggest one. What I see as the largest obstruction to transformation is this: taking yourself too seriously. To my way of thinking, transformative art requires a sense of humor. And sometimes, San Franciscans are guilty of taking themselves a bit too seriously. It’s a delicate balance (like so many things). I prefer to maintain a pataphysical attitude: taking everything equally seriously.

AM: The City, Not Long After ends slightly ambiguously, indicating the possibility of a return. Do you have any plans to produce a sequel to The City, Not Long After? What would the plot of this sequel be?

PM: I actually don’t see the ending as ambiguous. That said, I’ve thought of returning to The City, but I haven’t developed anything in that regard. I don’t rule out the possibility, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.