Judith Merril: The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 4

It took the nation’s publishers practically no time at all to get onto the same good thing (whether they liked it or not). The newspapers poured out a deluge of I.G.Y. and Vanguard promotional pieces—some rewritten, some pulled fresh from the files of the past two years. Hot on their heels, the weekly news magazines beat the bushes of industry, government, and universities for fugitive eggheads to “expertize” for the “news analysts.” (I wonder if anyone has calculated whether the total energy expended by physicists in interviews during October-November, 1957, would have been sufficient to lift a lunar probe?)

By now, of course, there is hardly a publication in the country that has not featured some sort of something about space. And a whole new category of publishing has been born, ranging from comic books and True Space Secrets (one issue of which contains a revealing article entitled “Sex in Space”) to the Washington Space Letter (subscription, $25 quarterly, $75 the year, as advertised in the Times financial section, for manufacturers who want “space contracts”) and the Space Journal published in Huntsville, Ala., by the Rocket City Astronomical Association (and featuring such sensational articles as “The Purpose of Man in the Universe”).

From a standing (if not sitting-down, or sound-asleep) start eighteen months ago, we have covered a truly fantastic stretch of psychological ground. The staggering fact is that today the American public as a whole has come to accept the imminence of space flight as a reality no less tangible than, say, the likelihood of another World Series next year —and hardly less exciting, either, if probably not quite so enjoyable. (I wonder, though, what might happen if someone were to start some office pools on the next series of Florida vs. California rocket launchings?)

I wonder, too, whether sound asleep was not after all the best way to speak of the national state of mind two years ago? Asleep, and dreaming? Whether you thought of it as childish or inspired, science-fictional, scientific, ennobling or illusory, the “dream” was there—as far back as man’s memory goes. Our language, folklore, and religion are all full of it. Ambitious, we “hitch our wagon to a star.” Demanding, we “want the moon on a platter.” Happy, we sit “on top of the world.” Prayerful, we seek eternal paradise —in heaven.

Perhaps this new reality is easier to accept than some others because it has the quality of awakening from a dream? Let us hope so: once fully awakened, we cannot but perceive, and accept, the equal reality of global brotherhood—and thus end forever the nightmare of global war.

S-f writers are restless types, generally. They seem to come from—and be forever going off to—bizarre employments and unlikely places. Even inside the field there are few “name writers” who have not at some time switched teams, and tried their hands at editing or criticism.

Dr. Asimov lives quietly in Boston, and his career as a Professor of Biochemistry is just what one might expect (but seldom find) in a science-fiction writer. He has never edited a magazine or conducted a review column. Apparently he is content with two fictional personalities (the other is juvenile author Paul French). Co-author of five (at last count) biochemistry textbooks, Isaac Asimov has a growing reputation for non-fiction science writing. As a notorious composer of hoax and spoof articles, he is among the leaders of the slim ranks of s-f humorists. He is the author of many, many short stories, and a versifier and parodist of note.

The verse reprinted here, which goes to the tune of “The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring,” was first published in Future Science Fiction. The article following was written especially for this book.

Twenty years ago, I wrote a science-fiction story called “Trends.” It dealt with a man who was building a spaceship which would take him to the Moon. The ship, alas, blew up in its first attempt and there was an outcry against him and space-flight in general. My hero, who survived, went into hiding, built another ship in secret, shot himself to the Moon, circled it, and returned safely.

Now I have lived to see events not only spoil this plot but make it seem more than faintly ridiculous.

What! A spaceship built in secret by one man? Spaceflight with the military not interested? (There wasn’t a single general in my story.) No countdown? No radiation bands in space? No re-entry problem? And, heaven help us, no Russians???

People in general are aware of this turn of events and many a dear acquaintance turns to me with a happy smile and says: “What are you s-f writers going to write about, now that they’re shooting to the Moon?”

(Fortunately, I have a reasonable answer to that question, which I invariably use. It’s, “Oh, shut up.”)

Space-flight isn’t even the first great s-f concept stolen by scientific advance. What about atomic power? Robert Heinlein’s story, “Blowups Happen,” published in 1940, concerned life in a uranium-fission power plant. By war’s end in 1945, most of the fantasy element had gone out of the story. Now nuclear power plants are hard fact and, as a matter of stern reality, the fission-power being made use of today already bears the flavor of decay. We are looking forward to fusion power ahead and to solar power.

But this is past. What of the future? What may science-fiction writers (and readers) expect to have stolen in the years to come? Where will the thunder-thieves strike next? Nothing is safe.

At a party a few weeks ago, a guest was introduced to me as a research man at an electronics laboratory. I said, “And what are you working on these days?”

Very casually, he said (between yawns, as it were), “Powering space-stations.”

“Ah,” I said, trying to sound intelligent. “Designing compact generators for assembly in space.”

“No, no,” he said. “The generators will be here on Earth. We’ll beam the energy.” I smiled weakly. I had written stories at various times between 1941 and 1957 that dealt with beamed energy to or from space-stations. Now they were assaulting that bastion of the imagination, too.

Nothing is too “science-fictional” for the thunder-thieves.

Consider the question of “anti-matter.” In 1934, the first of the “anti-particles,” the positron, was discovered. It was just like an electron in mass and behavior, but whereas the electron was negatively charged, the positron was positively charged. The two were opposites.

In 1937, John D. Clark wrote a story called “Minus Planet,” in which he envisioned anti-matter—with atoms made up of positrons circling negatively charged nuclei. (The actual atoms with which we are familiar contain electrons circling a positively charged nucleus.) A collision of anti-matter with ordinary matter involves a vast explosion since electrons and positrons combine to form pure energy. In Clark’s story, a mass of anti-matter heading for the Earth is destroyed by having the Moon steered into its path.