This blog post by Quinn Hughes focuses on something that Delany would later explain in his interview over his novel Trouble on Triton. The word “kippleization” is a neologism. Science Fiction uses these neologicisms are a core tool to create the images need for cognitive astrangement.
Sentence:
“It’s a universal
principle operating throughout the universe; the entire universe is moving toward a final state of total, absolute kippleization.”
In this sentence, an extremely important topic that pertains to the entire subject of the novel comes up. The entire story is based on a catastrophic post-war world regarding human civilization as we know it. While I’ve only read to chapter 13 at this point of writing this, I can assume that “World War Terminus” as the novel coins it, was a devastating nuclear war that can be evident by examples of “fallout” and “brain damage from the dust”. Furthermore, when focusing on the character of Isidore, we find someone who appears to be far worse off than Rick. Isidore who recently meets a girl named “Pris”, explains to her that “kipple” is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any “kipple” around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it. It always gets more and more”. I include this long quote sheerly for the reason that Kipple in essence, as the way that I interpret its meaning within the novel, is the inevitable doom of how unlivable planet earth as become. The “kipple” is essentially the means to an eventual end that you truly cannot control without human interference. Without such interaction with the “kipple”, the planet will continue to continue, and get worse and worse. It’s almost as if the “kipple” is a side effect of the nuclear fallout and destruction post “World War Terminus”. For further clarification regarding what “kippleization” truly is, we can also look at an excerpt that Rick states, saying that “the entire planet had begun to disintegrate into junk, and to keep the planet habitable for the remaining population the junk had to be hauled away occasionally . . . or, as Buster Friendly liked to declare, Earth would die under a layer – not of radioactive dust – but of “kipple”. Perhaps “kipple” is a more friendly word that suppresses that sheer grimness of the reality surrounding the planet?