I just said goodbye to you ten minutes ago in front of the hotel, and now, reading this, I am laughing out loud and missing you like crazy.

I think the next All-Star antho needs to have the word krusher in the title.

I ditto what Sarah said (though that might bring Susan down on your head.)

All-Star Infernokrusher Stories? Pardon me while I wipe the drool from my chin.

Another note: the variant spelling infernoqrusher is also accepted.

Groovy.

I enjoyed these, and laughed at them, and particularly liked Dora's poem.

But I'm a little confused about one thing (risking Ms. Groppi's ire):

Is "Infernokrusher" an alternative *name* for works currently referred to as "slipstream"? Or is it a different genre?

If I admit that that's a serious question, Susan will beat me up, so instead I'll request entertainingly faux-scholarly answers.

Jed, this is outside my field of expertise, but my impression is that slipstream and infernokrusher fiction are not the same thing, but may sometimes overlap, as for example when slipstream fiction contains infernos or krushing. So, you could have a story in which human beings inexplicably begin turning into rhinoceroses (a solid slipstream plot), and then suddenly a flaming meteor could fall on them and wipe them out (the infernokrushing element). I hope that helps. And I'm so glad you liked my poem. I'm currently working on a piece of infernokrusher visual art, to be called Mona Lisa Fragments. :)

Admittedly I am not an innovator or even an early adopter here, but solidly in the consumer realm, but I was under the impression that infernokrush is intended to replace slipstream (and by replace, I of course mean crush into very small pieces). Furthermore, it really goes without saying, though that's not going to stop me, that by its very nature infernokrush is interstitial, since it's all about reducing the interstices into very small parts.

I'm currently working on a piece of infernokrusher visual art, to be called Mona Lisa Fragments.

Which ties in nicely with Bradbury's Farenheit 451, a landmark in early pre-protoinfernokrusherian fiction.

A roaring infernokrusher which seems to run on machine-gun fire is more beautiful than the Venus on a Half-Shell.

Inferno good. Krush pretty.

In the junkyard of old tropes we shall make cubes of solid steel story.

And with this, the newly retitled "I Just Want To Set The World On Fire" becomes The Song to sing at WisCon Karaoke.

Is "Infernokrusher" an alternative *name* for works currently referred to as "slipstream"? Or is it a different genre?

This, of course, was the crux of Connor Cushing's seminal essay in Burn Ward; whether "Infernokrusher" had moved away from its so-called "original" meaning. Cushing felt strongly that IK was "conceived as a means of blasting away the ghetto walls of so-called 'slipstream' and pounding the bricks of said walls into powder. In other words, Infernokrusher was, at that time, seen as the demon child of the wishy-washy term coined by Sterling, an enfant terrible whose rebellion was much influenced by the parentage it outwardsly disdained. Since then, however, a splintering has occurred between those who see Infernokrusher as a metaphorical trampling of genre boundaries, and those who see metaphor itself as something to be incinerated."

Reading this, I feel that my brain is going to explode. Thus I will be making infernokrusher performance art.

It's nice to get back to my roots.

"Which ties in nicely with Bradbury's Farenheit 451, a landmark in early pre-protoinfernokrusherian fiction."

I'm glad that Karen brought up Bradbury's novel, which demonstrates, I think, the difference between early fiction with an infernokrusher sensibility and later, true infernokrusher fiction: Farenheit 451 does contain infernos, but lacks literal (as opposed to metaphorical) krushing. Still, it clearly also demonstrates the link between the two movements. Thus, I tend to agree with Cushing, although I was disappointed when he began to quote Lacan. (Emmaline Lacan attempts to argue, in either issue 2 or 3 of Burn Ward, I'm not sure which, since my copies disappeared in an unfortunate and accidental conflagration, that infernokrusher fiction is merely an aspect of postmodernism, which to my mind is clearly specious. The fact that both are about fragmentation is like saying that a turtle is a kind of elephant because both have tails.

I'm sorry to report that Mona Lisa Fragments didn't work out as planned, and has been renamed Ashes and More Ashes. I'm pretty good with paints, but relatively new to the use of dynamite as an artistic medium. I think it's just going to take practice . . .

And with this, the newly retitled "I Just Want To Set The World On Fire" becomes The Song to sing at WisCon Karaoke.

And here I figured we'd just use "This Fire."

"I'm going to burn this city / burn this city!"

Ah, plenty of room on the soundtrack.

Thus, I tend to agree with Cushing, although I was disappointed when he began to quote Lacan.

It's also tiresome the way he begins every single one of his articles with an epigraph from the Incredible Hulk.

It's also tiresome the way he begins every single one of his articles with an epigraph from the Incredible Hulk.

You'd think he could at least quote Mongo or Ludo.

an epigraph from the Incredible Hulk.

A clear line of evolution can be traced from the Manhattan Project through the Cold War, comic book characters, and Japanese monster movies and ultimately to the infernokrusher movement.

The atomic bomb was, at least in terms of human accomplishment, the ur-infernokrush. "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds" -- quoted by Robert Oppenheimer after the Trinity test, although this quote's presence in the Bhagavad Gita testifies that the gods and forces of nature had been practicing infernokrushing behavior long before mere humans became capable of it.

As comics became the mythology of the twentieth century, they incorporated many infernokrushing icons. Galactus was the embodiment of nature's destructive force, an attempt to put a "human" face on the realization that in an infinite cosmos, sometimes your planet will just blow up for no reason that you can comprehend. Darkseid represented the ultimate corruption that infernokrushing power bestows on an individual: given the ability to destroy the Universe, what is left but to use it? The transformation and sacrifice of Dark Phoenix showed that even the most well-intentioned soul must either succumb to the infernokrushing instinct, or be destroyed itself. And the Incredible Hulk, created in a man-made infernokrushing weapons test, embodied the continuing struggle of the ordinary human to contain and control his urges to tap the inner infernokrushing spirit. Who among us has not harbored the urge to turn green and "smash puny humans"?

Godzilla, of course, was the same spirit as the Hulk, seen through the lenses of a different medium and culture. The inferno that we unleash will ultimately return to crush us all.

I am highly in favor of any movement whose literary roots can be better comprehended via an extended study session of comics and stomp-Tokyo movies.

Cushing works much better in person; his readings at Burning Man are not to be missed. I hear he's got permission to do something special this year for July 16th, out on the White Sands Missile Range.

Thanks for the explanations, all. I'm way behind on _Burn Ward_ -- I'll have to go look up the Cushing pieces. (I assume that "pieces" is the correct term for items of or about Infernokrusher art?)

Perhaps someone who's more caught up can enlighten me on whether anyone ever got around to interviewing Survival Research Labs for Burn Ward? They may not be quite as proto-IK as Zeus, the A-bomb, or Godzilla (thanks for that excellent discussion, Jimcat!), but they seem to me to be among IK's most prominent immediate predecessors, and I don't feel they've had the recognition they deserve among the IK community.

(Or "kommunity" as some would have it.)

I also highly recommend the song "Smash It!" from my favorite semi-obscure Minneapolis band, the Rank Strangers (it's actually in the iTunes music store, which surprised me to no end).

(I assume that "pieces" is the correct term for items of or about Infernokrusher art?)

Actually, some of the infernokrusherati use "pieces" in a somewhat snide fashion, implying limited qrushing. The term of respect is "smithereens".

(Or "kommunity" as some would have it.)

Um, let's not start with that.

(Qommunity is acceptable, though...)

The term of respect is "smithereens"

Another band for the soundtrack . . .

Rapid oxidation is the new black.

"If I can't krush, I don't want to be part of your revolution."

kids, i've only got one thing to say here:

Dante.

also:

Ring of Fire

Texas is full of abandoned factories that looked like they once housed infernos/krushed. so perhaps we are also talking about the american industrial wasteland. also, waffle house, for what the eggs did to my stomach.

if i'm the ignitrix, can i actually HAVE a monster truck? or could we have a communal one? it'd be a big hit at the cons.

If you're the ignitrix, I don't think anyone can stop you from having a monster truck. Or two!

what i want to know is is krushing a patriarchal or matriarchal movement... should any memetic tives attempting infernokrushing literative manoeuvres fear a torrential expansive or gushing backlash(wash)?

while googling some spoken word bits from an old Swirlies album a couple months ago, i instead came across what might be considered PROTO-INFERNOKRUSHER EROTICA. with sex. and homophobia.
i'm scared. warning- for adult only.

http://www.textfiles.com/sex/sexsata2.hum

and i just want to apologize in advance for any pain and/or corneal damage that may be caused by reading that story.

i am truly sorry.

PS - but it did seem to embrace the monster
truck sensibility whole heartedly, didn't it?

Call me Ishmakrusher.

Philip K. Dick's short story "Null-O" (excerpt) is another proto-infernokrusher work. It's about a little boy who believes that the division of things into objects is as arbitrary as the rules of baseball, and aims to rectify this division by means of high explosives.

Kailas, the answer to your question is “No.”

Okay, the first Infernokrusher beach party needs one of these.

I've posted some notes on my blog here.

Kailas, the answer to your question is “No.”

On the contrary: fear is a perfectly acceptable infernoqrusher emotion. If the tives want to fear the expansive, IMHO they should be encouraged to do so.

As long as they blow stuff up, too.

That issue of McSweeney's is going to make for some unusually challenging bathroom reading.

Just don't try to read it on the plane -- or anywhere else with smoke detectors, really.

Or you could just get the krusher edition, instead the inferno edition--all the same text, in two garbage bags full of small strips of paper.

It does bring up another question about the movement--should the fragments be expected to have the same impact as the whole (hole?)? Will the book have to be reassembled prior to reading, or can one simply read the strips in any order and still have the same reading experience?

> and still have the same reading experience?

In her groundbreaking essay in Burn Ward, Thermopyla Foomi argued that infernokrusher art rejects the any identity between any two reading experiences.

The infernokrusher worldview, in Foomi's view, sees all assemblages -- physical or ideological -- not as integral wholes, but as mere targets for explosion. In contradistinction to the homogenous reductionism of the physical sciences (all atoms are alike), it offers a heterogenous reductionism (all fragments are different).

I think Foomi's assessment is true as far as it goes, but fails ultimately in that it ascribes -- if only by inference -- a *reason* behind infernokrusher art's desire to blow stuff up.

But really, infernokrusher art just wants to blow stuff up.

But isn’t Foomi really arguing that the destruction of the assemblage is not a consequence of the existence of the assemblage? That, in fact, the reduction to parts is itself, a telos, and that the existence of the whole should be considered in the light of that final cause?

Is it enough to shred the paper, or is that "soft" infernokrusher? Or does the "soft" label only apply to metaphorical infernokrushing?

I was strongly under the impression that "true" infernokrusher would still require lighting the strips of paper on fire. And possibly detonating a toilet.

Because infernokrusher krushes everything in its path! Even if it wasn't actually in its path.

Pardon the intrusion from someone who just stumbled into this room, but I think Professor Sterling was on to something in that other thread about the difference between Infernokrusher and slipstream.

Slipstream is untenable in a world of imminent apocalypse. Slipstream meanders around Dan Clowes’ *Ghost World* -- suburban surrealism that explores the secrets lurking in run-down strip malls, the fabulous interstices discovered at branch libraries and bus stops on forgotten green 1930s boulevards. Slipstream is the fiction Borges would have written if he grew up in Omaha reading *Fantastic Four* and watching *Gilligan’s Island* reruns.

Slipstream dies when they blow up the branch library, when they restock the shelves with intelligent design, when *Fahrenheit 451’s* motorcycle helmet and jackboot secret police materialize to round up the irony-drunk twentysomethings, when geopolitical realism spliced with neo-utopian dreams decides to remake global consensus reality with Shock and Awe.

Slipstream is the narrative Weimar that occupied the interstice between the Cold War and the GWOT.**

(**Global War on Terror, not to be confused with GWAR, the suburban guys that play death metal in monster masks, which is both kind of slipstream and kind of Infernokrusher, if you think about it.)

Infernokrusher embraces pulp fiction with an ironic postmodern twist, recognizing that reinvented pulp is a potent dissenting WMD in a world where the “reality-based-community” of the post-Enlightenment west is under dual assault from neo-necromancers employing Jet Age action narratives to extinguish the meme of liberal individualism -- be they the Jihadi pilots of *George Kennedy’s 9/11* or the Hestonian “where’d those nice passengers go” pilots of *Left Behind*, each with a flight plan to a rapture that would extinguish imagination (except for the kind of imagination required to chase visions of Moroni).

This ain’t no Philip Jose Farmer, Doc Savage in Sun City retro-pulp, amusing a roomful of reclusive old friends with inside jokes. Infernokrusher leaves the con and sneaks into the Super Bowl with exploding fabulist dirigibles. Infernokrusher arms narrative rebellion. Infernokrusher outmaneuvers The Da Vinci Code, tunneling straight to the heart of the popular culture with the antidote to narrative anthrax.

Infernokrusher is the appropriate speculative fiction response when the evening news reads like a Robert E. Howard *El Borak* story.

Slipstream is Joy Division, rainy and mopy. Infernokrusher is Einstuerzende Neubauten, live onstage grinding cinderblocks with power tools, spewing flaming chunks of concrete at the audience.

Slipstream is a Satie meditation, dreamy, beautiful, ethereal. Infernokrusher is Stockhausen’s Helikopter Streichquartette, four dissonant strings in four separate Dutch Air Force helicopters, screaming in German.

Slipstream is a koan. Infernokrusher is a quote from a Mickey Spillane character on acid.

Slipstream is ephemeral film, decrypting the secret codes in 1970s Emergency Broadcast System messages and health class filmstrips. A stark contrast with that seminal work of proto-Infernokrusher cinema: Rowdy Herrington’s *Road House* (1989). Baptized in the slipstream-crushing Colorado concentration camps of *Red Dawn*, Patrick Swayze plays Dalton, an NYU deconstructionist who abandons blackboard philosophy to become the paramount gladiator of the mullet-ridden storefronts of America’s frontage roads -- a mercenary bouncer-monk. In the heart of red-state architectural interstitia, he confronts the inferno that has been created by a crypto-capitalist bent on the subjugation of the community and its indigenous pop cultural traditions with fire, extortion, bad taxidermy, and, yes, **monster trucks driven through buildings**. Against all odds, he learns that his mastery of naked barnyard Kung Fu at the confluence of American pulp narrative and Continental critspeak enables him to wield new powers and reclaim the Zeitgeist.

Plans are underway for an Infernokrusher-centric DVD commentary track, to be podcast soon at a theater near you.

Hey, the door’s open — no apology necessary for barging.

I’m not sure I agree with your slipstream-as-Weimar take, but I think you’re on to something. If slipstream originated as a response to the Cold War zeitgeist, it died with the short twentieth century — no wonder it’s lately seemed so shambling and lifeless.

Hal, Chris, this is devastating stuff. Glad you're on our side.

Boy, that gives a whole new perspective on that idiotic 'most harmful books of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' list. Y'all's book can take any of those...

I'm also wondering: Would it be fair to say that Fafnir and Giblets (if not the Medium Lobster) had an influence on the infernoqrusher movement, or would it be more fair to say 'Flee! Flee from the wrath of Giblets!'.

Also, who was it who said 'If the Hindenberg did not exist, we would have to invent it, and then blow it the fuck up'?

Thanks,
-V.

It's always fair to say "Flee from the wrath of Giblets!" But, yes.

'If the Hindenberg did not exist, we would have to invent it, and then blow it the fuck up'?

I'm sorry, I think this needs to be our official motto.

I suggest a new technical term: Susan's Zeppelin. By analogy with Chekhov's gun, "If you show a Zeppelin in the story, it must explode in flames before the end."

Which immediately makes me want to write a story in which everything but the zeppelin explodes.

It's just been established as a trope, and already you want to subvert it. Karen, you are clearly ahead of our time.

Over at the Nielsen Haydens’, Mike Ford has coined what I think may be the perfect Infernokrusher slogan: Literary excellence through superior horsepower.

A Sonnet Lumiere

My love is like a red, red fire,
My heart on flame but out of luck.
You are my death, my funeral pyre.
Ripped out and torn and blown to fuck,
My heart explodes with my desire
To die beneath your monster truck.
I offer this, this tattered verse.
Nail-gun it to my dead eyelids
Then light the fuse, blow up my hearse!
My hopes are krushed; my life is shit.
Put your behemoth in reverse,
Drive over all my shattered bits.
[From here the MS can't be read,
The last two lines reduced to shreds]

Y'all are brilliant.

David, your comments form still has a "forget personal information" button. That seems kinda slipstreamy to me. How about "obliterate personal information"? Or maybe "obliterate persona"?

In the current issue of SF Weekly, the Lab Notes column is entitled Why Crush the Moon?

Coincidence?

I think not!

I would like to nominate Andrew W. K. for the official Infernokrusher soundtrack. While all his music is clearly informed by the infernokrusher spirit, three songs, "Ready To Die", "Tear it Up", and "The End Of Our Lives", seem particularly apt.

I have created what I believe to be the VERY FIRST work of Infernokrusher Interactive Fiction. It is indebted to the works of Charles Stross, inter alia, in that I just finished _Accelerando_ before sitting down with a bottle of whisky and writing it. Hence the lobsters. The observant may notice other _homages_, which is a fancy French word for "stuff I stole."

You can get it at http://www.fsf.net/~adam/TTSF.z5 and you will need an Inform interpreter to play it. If play is the word.

Adam

Actually, some of the infernokrusherati use "pieces" in a somewhat snide fashion, implying limited qrushing. The term of respect is "smithereens".

Any serious discussion of smithereens must reference Robert Silverberg's brilliant essay on the topic: "Smithereens" published in Asimov's March issue of 2000.

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Cockburn's incendiary "Triumphal Resistentialism: Infernokrusher exploded." There are many flaws in the piece, but the notion of the No-Thing as so overcome by Dingenhass as to desire and bring about it's utter firey, crushing destruction was dynamite.

This is an actual 13th century Italian poem:

If I were fire, I'd burn up the world;
if I were storm, I'd raise a giant swell
and drown it all; if I were God I'd hurl
this rat's-ass circus all the way to hell.
If I were pope, how happy I would be!
I'd cheat the Christians blind and suck their blood.
To serve as emperor I might agree,
so I could chop off everybody's head.
If I were Death, I'd go to see my dad —
of course with mother I would do the same.
If I were Life, I'd run from them like mad.
If I were Cecco, as indeed I am,
I'd take the lovely and the lively dames
and leave for you the ugly and the sad.

From the Italian of Cecco Angiolieri (Siennese, c.1258–1312).

http://www.monadnock.net/translations/it_fire.html

I've just written an Infernokrusher Christmas story:

The Substitute (or A Very Infernokrusher Christmas)

Oh woe is me. What have I wrought?

*Kinsley explodes*