As readers of L&R will be aware, Maggie quickly abandoned her Mechanicos sci-fi storylines, so much so that the title is almost a misnomer.
What is probably more true to say is that the characters live on the outskirts of a technological world; they use it but it does not use them. They get the leftovers of Capri and so forth (). Maggie lives in the physical world of decay, as her moniker from the first book might suggest.
Technology cannot share this world since it has the optimism of an exit from the cyclical underworld (P147)
If technology is “advanced” it is because it has this exit strategy via number from the underworld (see Gates’ tribal-culture destroying tech-toilet HB31) However, this leads to a future of rote that is psychically weak.
The primitive in reality is the figurative reality that gives life meaning. One way to look at it is that a future without the primitive is a technological hell-hole, somewhat like Outland, the 1981 sci-fi movie starring Sean Connery as a marshall resembling Gary Cooper’s in High Noon.
Taking a note from Lee Perry, hell is “very low” while heaven is “very high” (Oxygen 4). The primitive version of “very high” is figurative symmetry, or the notions of celestial heaven propounded by such as Milton.
The primitive version of “very low” would be primal chaos. There is a way of thinking that says chaos is simply lack of symmetry,. Such as the perfection of female form.
The notion of technology without the primitive is a figment of the exit mentality that is an ego-compulsion (of number). From that perspective, the Anglo-world is a compulsive one, while the Latin/Caribbean one is more natural. Perry’s imaginative light touch with technology reflects his philosophy of the “Super Ape”, something not unlike the comic book superhero.
The Super Ape is Man as a species who lives underground as well as overground; who is aware of the primitive power that corrupts.
The romantics, from Byron to Howard to Kirby to BWS have a primitive power that doesn’t bow to technology. Stories are driven by primal forces. Mad Max is the archetypal example of technology that appears primitive owing to this war between the untamed and the technological.
The hero (here Mel Gibson) is a muscular throwback; never a robot, a natural man with a manly aura (Django is another archetype). His primal strength is never subdued; his untamed soul is at war.
This war is required for stories to have psychic strength and depth. The Kaluta/Lee Starstruck is another example of the neverending conflict between advance and primitive beliefs.
Beliefs are to do with physical reality rather than numerical compulsions. Without the physical there can be no revival from corruption and decay. The psychic strength that is contained in Jaime’s stories of Maggie is testament to this.
Corruption you could say is the lack of the tyranny of order (“fact”) that renders societies fascistic. This is the narrow escape that America has achieved from a 2-term Trump scenario. If one thinks of a future Trumps-scape allied with Silicon Valley assholes it’s as close to hell-on-Earth as one can imagine.
Outland is quite a good take on the age-old hero as an agent of integrity counteracting chaotic advance (in this case corporate). The strong have a primal belief in themselves while the weak are gullible suckers for any techno-escape that is an exit to nowhere.
