He Walked Among Us — Norman Spinrad

Why was HE WALKED AMONG US, described as the Magnum Opus of one of the best-known science fiction writers of the age, first published in German rather than Eng-lish? Why is its first English language edition electronic? What do conventional American publishers find so dangerous about this novel? Is it a science fiction novel or a comic novel about show business? Is Ralf, the comedian from the future, just doing schtick, or is he what he claims to be, an emissary sent back from a terminal future to save the human race from its own stupidity through laughter? Or could he even be something more? Maybe much more? In fact, HE WALKED AMONG US is also a metaphysical novel about mind and time and space, and, given enough of all three, surely there will be more things therein than are dreamt of in our philosophies. Or not. For HE WALKED AMONG US has been called the first meta science fiction novel, a novel about our collective mediated dreamtime and its creators, about the interplay of what we call science and what we call fantasy and what we call entertainment, of the realities of show biz, New Age mysticism and science fiction writers, publishers, and fans. And how that dreamtime calls into being what we call the real world.