The Beginnings of the Beat Generation

During the late 40's Jody lived in Berkeley with George and Nancy Leite.  They ran daliel's bookstore on Telegraph Ave. and published Circle Magazine.  Both influential precursors to the birth of the Beat movement. 

Jody and George co-authored as Thurston Scott the novel CURE IT WITH HONEY. Here is an entry in Jody's journal from Monday, Aug 30, 1948:

"Day as usual. G. in fine mood. All go to SF at 6 to De Angulo opening, then to A. Nin's, then to Italian restaurant, then to Mona's.  Spend total of 1 fin.  All somewhat sad.  Bed late."

George and Anais Nin at book signing at daliel's

photo by Daliel Leite

Inside daliel's looking toward Telegraph Ave.

photo by George Leite

Jody circa 1950's

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_Magazine]

Kicking And Screaming: A Previously Unseen Story By Jody Scott!

We are tremendously thankful to Mary Whealen for this very special treat: a previously unpublished story by Jody!

Kicking And Screaming

By Jody Scott

Naked we come into this world and handsomely outfitted in a new pinstripe from Big & Tall, complete with a foulard tie, we go out of it.

At any rate that’s what happened to Nettie Polotnik’s husband Phil who had been dead nine years to the very day when our story begins. Philip Hart Polotnik had never been neat while he was alive (Phil died at age fifty-six, his skull broken in a car crash); he drank like a fish, played poker all night long and smelled like the nasty brown cigars he smoked (and those cigars were what killed him, according to Nettie! If it hadn’t been that accident it would have been emphysema like the late Johnny Carson). Nettie herself was the neat one in the family. Their four children, Michael, Tim, Meredith and Polly, now grown-and-gone were about average on the neatness scale, with son Timmy (once a juvenile delinquent, today a world famous oncologist; can you believe such a turn of events?) being the sloppiest of the lot, Nettie was thinking as she hummed somewhat happily while cleaning out the fridge.

Funny how much junk gets collected when a person lives alone. Now why was there an open, moldy (covered with a crawling, green, slimy fuzz; ick! The smell of it—phew! Into the garbage it went)—can of tuna when the only person in this family who even liked tuna was daughter Meredith who lived in New Rochelle and had four children of her own? You’d think—but never mind what you’d think; Nettie didn’t want to dip into that old barrel of pain, regret and sorrow, why should she? She was alive, vibrant and happy, she liked living alone in peace and quiet and most of all you can’t change the past so why bother yourself with it?

“I don’t know about that,” Phil said. “Reality isn’t exactly what we always thought it was, honey.”

Her husband was sitting across the table in his new pinstripe suit, smoking a cigar and drinking coffee which was all wrong because he’d been dead for nearly a decade. . And yet—!

“I’m not going to argue with you so butt the hell out,” Nettie snapped. Feeling tired, she didn’t have time to argue the same foolish old arguments, she had a dental appointment in an hour and had to buy gas on the way (running out of gas was always so embarrassing) and then grocery-shop. But she felt strange, very strange indeed. And there certainly wasn’t any use in snapping at poor dead Phil about it because the poor guy wasn’t even alive for mercy sake!…

Something was happening to Nettie and she had no idea what, except that she was terribly dizzy and before you could say “Poof!” she was sprawled on the floor in her ratty old blue bathrobe that had come untied and was all rucked up under her. There wasn’t much pain, except for a clutching in the chest (it reminded her of Valentine’s Day in school when the kids all exchanged hearts, big shiny paper hearts that said “Be mine!” with a pretty lace banner across the front of them) but this was different, because—

Suddenly Nettie found herself up at the ceiling looking down at her body. She hadn’t realized how filthy it was up here—the entire ceiling could use a good scrubbing but most especially the overhead fixture; there were dead flies in the globe, quite disgusting but that wasn’t the worst of it.

The worst of it was: leaving that funny-looking hunk of clay all sprawled out, its butt showing, right in the middle of her scrubbed kitchen floor for someone else to find which was awful but she couldn’t do anything about it, so—

“What were you saying dear?” she asked Phil but Phil was long gone, so Nettie hurried so she wouldn’t be late—very sorry about the mess on the floor but wasn’t that the way life always ended?—so no use worrying about it. Sad, but true; and with a sigh, Nettie herself was out of there.

Out Now After Almost 40 Years: 

The Surreal Feminist SF Classic, 

Passing For Human

By Jody Scott

Out Now on Kindle!

Back In Print After Almost 40 Years: The Surreal Feminist SF Classic, PASSING FOR HUMAN By Jody Scott

Own it for $2.99!

Free on KindleUnlimited

Considered by i09 as "One Of The 10 Weirdest Science Fiction Novels That You've Never Read" Digital Parchment Services, and the estate of Jody Scott, is thrilled to announce the republication of Passing For Human!

"I liked Passing for Human." –Neil Gaiman

Passing For Human is the beginning of The Benaroya Chronicles trilogy, continued in the soon-to-be-released I, Vampire and concluding with Scott's never-before-published final book in the series!

"A joyously and at times scatologically tangled Satire of the post-industrial Western world from a Feminist point of view that wittily verges on misandry." -The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Passing for Human Or
Who Isn't Afraid Of Virginia Wolf?
Starring:
Benaroya
A 36-foot
Extraterrestrial "dolphin"
In the role of:
"Brenda Starr"
"Emma Peel"
Mary Worth
And a happy New Guinea hoptoad

With an all-star cast including
Abraham Lincoln
Jennison, the Kansas Jayhawker
Heidi's Grandfather
General George S. Patton
The Los Angeles Police Department
The Prince Of Darkness
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Ancient Egypt
The Isle of Capri
Interstellar Station 8
Four billion newly created people
And several hundred Richard Nixons

When a dolphin-like alien comes to Earth disguised in a female human body, it sets the stage for a wild feminist romp that out stranges Stranger in a Strange Land!

"The pace of the story never lets up, yet it finds room for serious contemplation of humanity’s woes. The style is easy, with an edge of noir. The central character is a bit of a tough girl which, mixed with her naivety about humans, makes for an intriguing and likeable character. Especially as she (in common with the other aliens) inhabits bodies she has chosen from Earth culture – Brenda Starr, Emma Peel, and Virginia Woolf. Who could not like that, especially the final scenes in which Virginia Woolf is involved in a running gun battle. The humor, pace, and wry observation make this a rare and wonderful beast – a serious science fiction novel that doesn’t take itself seriously."

– Graeme K Talboys, grumbooks Review

"The novel leaps along with an energy and a disregard for convention that reminds me a little of genre outsiders like Barry Malzberg and possibly Josephine Saxton in that this reads like a romp through the Collective Unconscious. A closer comparison might be with the early novels of Ishmael Reed who shares with Scott a vitriolic contempt for seemingly all and everything, sniping and satirizing hilariously along the way.  Jody Scott’s wild imagination, seemingly scattershot but tightly controlled, makes Passing For Human an absurdly comic romp of unexpected juxtapositions and witty asides. Good examples of what SF can do when it steps out of its comfort zone, and of how women’s SF can challenge the genre assumptions by challenging its tropes and its language. Take a look, see what you think."

– Performative Utterance

This Strange Particle Press release features Barry N. Malzberg's original 1977 introduction, and a special forward by Jody Scott's heir and life partner, Mary Whealen.

Passing for Human (The Benaroya Chronicles) By Jody Scott http://amzn.com/B0143K2LXG

$5.99

FREE on KindleUnlimited for a limited time!

Paperback edition coming September 15th

#

The estate-authorized Jody Scott site (http://www.authorjodyscott.com)

Digital Parchment Services (http://digitalparchmentservices.com)

For information please feel free to contact mchristian@digitalparchmentservices.com

Wonderful Picture Of SciFi Fan Favorite Jody Scott!

Here's a wonderful picture of Jody Scott, from the Jody Scott Facebook fan page!

Jody Scott's Passing For Human: One Of "10 Weirdest Science Fiction Novels That You've Never Read" from iO9

As a pre-re-release of Jody Scott's legendary science fiction fan-favorite novel, Passing For Human (coming from Digital Parchment Service's Strange Particle Press imprint) here's this wonderful book's listing as one Of "10 Weirdest Science Fiction Novels That You've Never Read" from iO9:

7. Passing for Human, by Jody Scott (1977) 

Benaroya is a giant space dolphin who's only interested in pleasure, until she decides to study humans. To do this, she disguises herself as Brenda Starr, the girl reporter from the newspaper comics. As she tells one human, "You might say I try to relate in a meaningful, concerned way to autochthonous bipeds in general." Later, Benaroya disguises herself as Emma Peel (from The Avengers) and author Virginia Woolf. Other members of her species are disguised as Abraham Lincoln and George S. Patton, while their support drones look like Richard Nixon. While disguised as Virginia Woolf, Benaroya gets herself captured by a race of psychopathic aliens who want to destroy the Earth, and you get a weird scene where Virginia Woolf debates whether it's a bad thing to fall in love with the leader of a group of genocidal alien psychopaths.

Classic Cover of Cure It With Honey!

Here's a re-issue cover of Jody Scott and George Thurston Leite's Cure It With Honey (sporting the new title of I'll Get Mine and authors as Thurston Scott).

Coming soon from Digital Parchment Services is a brand new edition of Cure It With Honey!

Grumbooks Raves About Jody Scott's SF Fan Favorite Novel, Passing For Human!

Here's a great review of Jody Scott's Passing For Human, from Grumbooks.

The brand new edition of Passing for Human will be out shortly from Digital Parchment Services/Strange Particle Press

I missed this book when it first came out (and only came across it as I’m obsessively filling in the gaps in my Women’s Press science fiction collection). This was my loss. 

The basic story is fairly straightforward sf fare. Alien anthropologists study earth, despair at humans, decide they are a disease that needs wiping out, whilst doing battle with other aliens who wish to enslave humanity (and perhaps produce what would be the most frighteningly efficient and expendable race of warriors the galaxy has ever seen).
In the hands of a lesser writer that could have been a big, steaming pile of schlock. In the hands of Jody Scott, it is a funny, compassionate, and rip-roaring adventure that exposes the flaws in the alien cultures just as readily as it exposes our own. 

The pace of the story never lets up, yet it finds room for serious contemplation of humanity’s woes. The style is easy, with an edge of noir. The central character is a bit of a tough girl which, mixed with her naivety about humans, makes for an intriguing and likeable character. Especially as she (in common with the other aliens) inhabits bodies she has chosen from Earth culture – Brenda Starr, Emma Peel, and Virginia Woolf. Who could not like that, especially the final scenes in which Virginia Woolf is involved in a running gun battle. 

The humour, pace, and wry observation make this a rare and wonderful beast – a serious science fiction novel that doesn’t take itself seriously.

- Graeme K Talboys