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The Shores of Suitability

(Common exegesis of Killers of the Rulers
portends the interrelationship of post-Joycean rhetoric with
post-Shavian political pluralism. Relate this confluence.
Elaborate and discuss. Exemplify.

The Old Hack is having a nightmare. In it, he has returned to academia and is seeking a master's degree at Extension U., which, he hopes, will enable him to find work as an assistant instructor of English. All right, it is a long shot, but he is almost out of ideas. The markets are really hell, and foreign sales have dried up. And he is having big trouble delivering on the one outline he has sold. So the Old Hack has enrolled in English 353A: Science Fiction and the Archetype, because in the catalog it seemed to be an easy three points (no paper required). If he knows anything, he knows science fiction. Right? Well, doesn't he? Now he is taking the final examination in this graduate-level course, which appears to focus on an old Ace Double, Killers of the Rulers. He is especially qualified to deal with this book. He wrote it back in 1957 between wives at the old place on West 89th Street. Even so, the exam is giving him trouble. Big trouble.

 

* * *

 

The subtheme of colonic usurpation in its Jungian relevance creates a multileveled tension in Killers of the Rulers, which points toward the induction of three distinct archetypes. Name these archetypes. Elaborate and discuss. Discuss further how a Freudian approach would defeat consummation of the Blue Alien Incursion.

 

The Old Hack is not sure exactly how he got into this. It all seemed so simple when he enrolled. The reading list, which included many of his old favorites, indicated this would be a snap, to say nothing of the pleasant surprise of finding Killers of the Rulers right in there between More than Human and The Forever Machine. But he suspected that things had begun to go wrong from the start; in the first session the young instructor had begun by speaking of a Manichean influence in the birth of American science fiction, and how the great Fifties novels were an extension of the Fabian theory of Socialism as propounded by the works of G. B. Shaw. The Old Hack had briefly thought of identifying himself when his book came up in November. "I wrote that one," he could have said (it had been written, as had all of the Ace Doubles, and too much of his other stuff, under a pseudonym), but by then he was totally confused. It did not seem wise to admit writing Killers of the Rulers, particularly if he could not understand a word the young instructor was saying about it.

 

* * *

 

Produce a 1,000-word monograph interrelating the empire building of Killers of the Rulers with the more pacific vision of More Than Human. Be specific. In what way does Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" inform and influence both works as controlling response? Why does Heartbreak House not apply here?

 

* * *

 

Heartbreak House. That's what West 89th Street had been. It was there, drunk and up against a deadline, that he wrote Killers of the Rulers on the kitchen table. The Old Hack hadn't even started it until the weekend before it was due. There had been all that excitement about him and Mabel Sue, and, besides, for a $750 advance (payable in halves) why should he get all upset about churning out this stuff to their convenience rather than his? Even then the book kind of lurched along, what with Betty (wife number one) crying and coming out of the bedroom now and then only to throw another of his paperbacks at him while he sat there typing. Finally he gave up, turned to the Cutty Sark, and took down that 1952 issue of Worlds of If, which he used to bloat up his novelette.

In the end the book was not what he had promised in the outline, but what the hell? Everyone lied and cheated in the small things (he had tried desperately to explain this to Betty); the important commitment was to getting the work done, and to holding on to enough of the advance money to have a good blowout. Despite all the screaming, he had been only three days late, thanks to the Cutty Sark, but then the bastards took a month to deliver the check, by which time he was well embarked on that disastrous series of events that ended with Mabel Sue's calling him a drunken liar and throwing his typewriter and the carbon of Killers of the Rulers out the third-story window.

 

* * *

 

Neologic devices in Killers of the Rulers account for, as in Finnegans Wake, much of its subnarrative power. Present and discuss five such devices. Analyze two of them. Describe how they function as a metaphoric combine of the Blue Aliens.

In his dream, the Old Hack brings his blank essay booklet up to the proctor midway through the three hours. "I can't stand it," he says shakily. "I can't stand it anymore. Just take me away. I'll be good." The proctor stares at him mercilessly through goggles of glittering glass. "Help. Help," the Old Hack whimpers as he tumbles like a stone through various levels of his dream world.

He finds himself awake and fifty-seven in his own bleak room at dawn, his hopes for an assistant instructorship at the college destroyed, the empty pages of Grandsons of the Killers of the Rulers littering the floor beside him, and this novel—his masterpiece, he had told the editor to clinch the contract, the crown of his career—three months overdue today. And counting.

 

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Framed