Moderan

Bunch, David R. Moderan. Amazing and Fantastic mostly, 1959-70. Fix-up: New York: Avon, 1971. Reprinted with ten previously uncollected stories by New York Review Books, 2018.

For full bibliographic listings, see Internet Speculative Fiction Database, as of December 2024, here.[1]

Nearly complete cyborgization of "elite 'new-metal' men having virtually all of their bodies replaced except for symbolic 'flesh-strips' to retain their identity as humans." The tales equate "the mechanization of people with the desire to conquer time." Discussed in The Mechanical God by Gary K. Wolfe, quote (220); see under Literary Criticism, Wolfe on "Instrumentalities […]."[2]

NYRB blurb linked below quotes Brian Aldiss on Moderan, “The effect is as if Whitman and Nietzsche had collaborated,” and summarizes:

Welcome to Moderan, world of the future. Here perpetual war is waged by furious masters fighting from Strongholds well stocked with “arsenals of fear,” earth is covered with vast sheets of plastic, and humans vie to replace more and more of their own “soft parts” with steel machinery. What need is there for nature when trees and flowers can be pushed up through holes in the plastic? Who requires human companionship when new-metal mistresses can be ordered from the shop? But even a Stronghold master can doubt the catechism of Moderan. Wanderers, poets, and his own children pay visits, proving that another world is possible.[3]

Full Rob Latham review, "An Ode to New-Metal Man: David R. Bunch’s 'Moderan'", in the 'Lost Angeles Review of Books", 11 September 2018, available on line.[4]

"A Pair by Bunch" is in the first Dangerous Visions anthology (1967),[5] introduced by Harlan Ellison: (1) "Incident in Moderan"[6] and (2) "The Escaping." "The Escaping" may be too indirect for study of the Human/Machine interface, but "Incident" strongly juxtaposes an unmodified human mourning his son and the war-loving super-macho local commander of a Stronghold, the first-person voice of the story. See for this strange brand of near-immortal posthuman cyborg coming across not-so-impressive compared and contrasted with a merely human human.

RDE et al., initial, Updated 24May18, 11Sep18 by RDE, with thanks to Rob Latham; 11Dec2024, with Erlich's listening to the Audible.com's Dangerous Visions.