The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

Walt Kelly had four pages in the Atlantic: “Ka-Platz! The Delight in the Unexpected.” Robert Bloch devoted his column in one issue of Rogue to the annual World Science Fiction Convention. At least two pieces by Soviet authors appeared here: one by Arkadi Strugatsky, in USSR, about Soviet science fiction; and “A Soviet View of American Science Fiction,” by Alexander Karantsev, in Amazing.

The first series of Sam Moskowitz’s bibliographic biographies of leading writers in the genre appeared in book form as Explorers of the Infinite (World Publishing Company, 1963). Michael Moorcock began a series which has since completed a scholarly analysis of fantasy fiction, in Science Fantasy. Life had a lengthy photo-biographic essay on Hugo Gernsback and “scientifiction.”

In addition to these individual statements, some fifty-two writers of s-f, and nine assorted editors, agents, reviewers, producers, publishers, etc., [A list of the participants will be found at the end of the Summation.] were involved in three separate publishing ventures: the Playboy symposium, the Double Bill survey, and a series of guest editorials in New Worlds.

The opinions expressed in the editorials would take too much space to summarize individually; as a group, they fall largely within the range of attitudes more concisely formulated in the Double Bill survey.

The questionnaire, compiled by Lloyd Biggie, Jr., asked eleven questions, most of which concentrated on advice to new writers. The three that evoked the most widely interesting responses were the raison d’être question quoted earlier, and these two: “For what reason or reasons do you write (or edit) science fiction in preference to other forms of literature?” and “What is your appraisal of the relationship of science fiction to the ‘mainstream’ of literature?”

Among forty-three participants, there were at least six or seven distinct notions of what “mainstream” meant—and even more differences about the relationship between mainstream and s-f. Some felt the first was a subdivision of the second; some that the second was a subdivision of the first; and some said there was no real distinction between the two, except that imposed by artificial labels. A large and vigorous minority felt the two forms are radically different and probably will not—certainly should not—merge and lose their separate identities. And cutting across all other differences (except among those who saw none) was a roughly half-and-half split on which is “better” literature.

In view of all these permutations of disagreement, the dear-cul response on the other two questions is startling. Discounting the several authors who gave as. reason for personal preference, “easier to write and sell” or “entertainment” as the major significance (since these are applicable to any field in which a writer happens to work), the overwhelming majority gave as their main answer to both these questions the freedom offered in s-f, as compared with other contemporary forms: freedom to express any and all opinions, to explore unconventional and unpopular ideas, to examine human problems and relationships, and to experiment with style and technique. (“It stretches the imagination.” “I am a surrealist at heart.” “The most iconoclastic form of literature.” Or John Campbell’s, “There’s room to think and move.”)

Next most important, and mentioned by at least half the authors, was the use of s-f (in this case primarily science fiction) as a learning medium. For some, this meant simply a vehicle for teaching (or preaching); others—and rather more—were interested in what they themselves learned, both as readers and writers) the largest number referred to the sheer intellectual exercise involved. (“Mind-stretching.” “Exhilaration.” “Kicks.” “Creative challenge.”)

The Playboy discussion was a showcase for this kind of, thought-kick. The twelve participants were invited, not to discuss their work, but to demonstrate it. Although the published version did not appear until the summer of 1963, the project was initiated almost a year earlier, at a taped midnight discussion during the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1962.

Seven of the final panel members were present at that first session, and it was the only actual “session.” Many tapes and mailings later, much-revised and re-exchanged, the symposium emerged as a wide-ranging, colorful résumé of science-fiction thinking over the past twenty-five years. If there was a certain lack of freshness of Idea, at least for the case-hardened s-f reader, in most of the subjects covered (space race, aliens, nuclear war, population explosion, genetic control, ocean farming, automation, robots, transportation and communication), it was a different matter when the discussion turned to the prospects for what I have called here humanics.

This is, of course, the true frontier of science in our day. When we have crossed it, we may come to new perceptions which will require a genuine re-evaluation of our understanding of the physical world. But for now, outside the most esoteric work in cosmology and, on the other end, subnudeonics, the largest part of our physical science is in the engineering stage. And by definition, it is where the breakthroughs are just about to come, that speculative fiction becomes exciting and fruitful.

Among the subjects covered were psychochemicals, as specifics for mental disease, as education conditioners, as sleep substitutes, and as pleasure enhancers; current work in mapping the brain with psycho-electronics, and the possibilities of its application in all the areas mentioned above; progress in medicine, surgery, and cybernetics, toward the total elimination of physical disease—and for a dramatic increase in the ordinary lifespan; the use of cryogenics to preserve bodies until new biochemical or surgical techniques are available; and of course the effects of these developments, and of other aspects of technology already in hand, on the sexual, domestic, intellectual, ethical, religious, and social behavior of human beings.

Lightly touched on, here and there, were the upheavals in economics, politics, religion, and education, which are already irrevocably under way, as a result of automation and communications advances—but which are still due for much more radical changes as psychological and physiological innovations occur, and as the more adventurous engineering research projects begin to bear fruit: broadcast power (solar or atomic), domestic automation, exploration of the solar system; or, less Immediate, antigravity and perhaps the matter duplicator.

Noticeably absent from the discussion were two major themes of the last generation of science fiction: time travel and ESP. In the case of time travel, one might feel the vein has been thoroughly worked; pending new information, there is nothing much more to be said. But ESP, or “psionics,” has been one of the most active areas of inquiry in the past decade, and still is. Presumably, Playboy is happy to be unconventional and iconoclastic, and willing to give space to eccentric or even possibly subversive ideas, but not quite prepared to be called “crackpot.”

This distinction—and I mean “honor”—belongs to the specialty science-fiction magazines. (Remember—it was crackpot, not long ago, to believe in the future of rocketry or space travel; and that “crackpots” was security-guard slang for Manhattan District scientists.) It was precisely this extra dimension of freedom of thought that the writers were talking about in the Double Bill survey. It was in terms of this much latitude that Campbell said, “There’s room to think and move.”