Judith Merril: The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 2

The streak-maned lion came to him, but it was too late. Mr. Kemper lay dying in the cold sun with the smell of lions like dust in his throat.

The basic forms of science-fantasy—the imaginary voyage, the extrapolative novel of the future, and the satire ad ab-surdum—all originated as vehicles for social criticism, literary devices employed by the more effective of God’s angry men to flavor with adventure, or lubricate with humor, the bitter pill of reason.

Even in the heyday of Technocratic Utopianism, when the intellectual elite among the Boosters of Blind Progress were blandly assured that all the ills of man would one day be cured by beating our picks and shovels into pushbuttons, and our church chimes into Pavlovian dinner-bells—when most “scientifiction” was a hash and rehash of behaviorist doctrine and mechanist dogma for the worshipers of the fatted machine—there were still people like Kapek, Forster, and Benet, using the same medium to question the accepted credos.

Toward the end of that period, in the late thirties, a bitter teen-ager named Kornbluth discovered there was cigarette money in story writing. Now, at the age of 34, after nearly twenty years of writing, the angry boy has become an angrier man, who wields the scalpel of social satire with a savagely entertaining skill.

The Lackawanna was still running one cautious morning train a day into Scranton, though the city was said to be emptying fast Professor Leuten and I had a coach to ourselves, except for a scared, jittery trainman who hung around and talked at us.

“The name’s Pech,” he said. “And let me tell you, the Peches have been around for a mighty long time in these parts. There’s a town twenty-three miles north of Scranton named Pechville. Full of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and I used to visit there and we used to send picture post cards and get them, too. But my God, mister, what’s happened to them?”

His question was rhetorical. He didn’t realize that Professor Leuten and I happened to be the only two people outside the miscalled Plague Area who could probably answer it.

“Mr. Pech,” I said, “if you don’t mind -- we’d like to talk some business.”

“Sorry,” he said miserably, and went on to the next car.

When we were alone Professor Leuten remarked: “An interesting reaction.” He was very smooth about it. Without the slightest warning he whipped a huge, writhing, hairy spider from his pocket and thrust it at my face.

I was fast on the draw too. In one violent fling I was standing on my left foot in the aisle, thumbing my nose, my tongue stuck out. Goose flesh rippled down my neck and shoulders.

“Very good,” he said, and put the spider away. It was damnably realistic. Even knowing that it was a gadget of twisted springs and plush, I cringed at the thought of its nestling in his pocket. With me it was spiders. With the professor it was rats and asphyxiation. Toward the end of our mutual training program it took only one part per million of sulfur dioxide gas in his vicinity to send him whirling into the posture of defense, cranelike on one leg, tongue out and thumb to nose, the sweat of terror on his brow.

“I have something to tell you, Professor,” I said.

“So?” he asked tolerantly. And that did it. The tolerance. I had been prepared to make my point with a dignified recital and apology, but there were two ways to tell the story and I suddenly chose the second.

“You’re a phony,” I said with satisfaction.

“What?” he gasped.

“A phony. A fake. A hoaxer. A self-deluding crackpot. Your Functional Epistemology is a farce. Let’s not go into this thing kidding ourselves.”

His accent thickened a little. “Let me remind you, Mr. Norris, that you are addressing a doctor of philosophy of the University of Gottingen and a member of the faculty of the University of Basle.”

“You mean a Privatdozent who teaches freshman logic. And I seem to remember that Gottingen revoked your degree.”

He said slowly: “I have known all along that you were a fool, Mr. Norris. Not until now did I realize that you are also an anti-Semite. It was the Nazis who went through an illegal ceremony of revocation.”

“So that makes me an anti-Semite. From a teacher of logic that’s very funny.”

“You are correct,” he said after a long pause. “I withdraw my remark. Now, would you be good enough to amplify yours?”

“Gladly, Professor. In the first place--”

I had been winding up the rubber rat in my pocket. I yanked it out and tossed it into his lap where it scrabbled and clawed. He yelled with terror, but the yell didn’t cost him a split second. Almost before it started from his throat he was standing one-legged, thumb to nose, tongue stuck out.

He thanked me coldly, I congratulated him coldly, I pocketed the rat while he shuddered and we went on with the conversation.

I told him how, eighteen months ago, Mr. Hopedale called me into his office. Nice office, oak panels, signed pictures of Hopedale Press writers from our glorious past: Kipling, Barrie, Theodore Roosevelt and the rest of the backlog boys.

What about Eino Elekinen, Mr. Hopedale wanted to know. Eino was one of our novelists. His first, Vinland the Good, had been a critical success and a popular flop; Cubs of the Viking Breed, the sequel, made us all a little money. He was now a month past delivery date on the final volume of the trilogy and the end was not in sight.

“I think he’s pulling a sit-down strike, Mr. Hopedale. He’s way overdrawn now and I had to refuse him a thousand-dollar advance. He wanted to send his wife to the Virgin Islands for a divorce.”

“Give him the money,” Mr. Hopedale said impatiently. “How can you expect the man to write when he’s beset by personal difficulties?”

“Mr. Hopedale,” I said politely, “she could divorce him right in New York State. He’s given her grounds in all five boroughs and the western townships of Long Island. But that’s not the point. He can’t write. And even if he could, the last thing American literature needs right now is another trilogy about a Scandinavian immigrant family.”

“I know,” he said. “I know. He’s not very good yet But I think he’s going to be, and do you want him to starve while he’s getting the juvenilia out of his system?” His next remark had nothing to do with Elekinen. He looked at the signed photo of T. R. “To a bully publisher” and said: “Norris, we’re broke.”

I said: “Ah?”

“We owe everybody. Printer, paper mill, warehouse. Everybody. It’s the end of Hopedale Press. Unless -- I don’t want you to think people have been reporting on you, Morris, but I understand you came up with an interesting idea at lunch yesterday. Some Swiss professor.”

I had to think hard. “You must mean Leuten, Mr. Hopedale. No, there’s nothing in it for us, sir. I was joking. My brother-he teaches philosophy at Columbia-- mentioned him to me. Leuten’s a crackpot. Every year or two Weintraub Verlag in Basle brings out another volume of his watchamacallit and they sell about a thousand. Functional Epistemology --my brother says it’s all nonsense, the kind of stuff vanity presses put out. It was just a gag about us turning him into a Schweitzer or a Toynbee and bringing out a one-volume condensation. People just buy his books, I suppose, because they got started and feel ashamed to stop.”

Mr. Hopedale said: “Do it, Norris. Do it. We can scrape together enough cash for one big promotion and then the end. I’m going to see Brewster of Commercial Factors in the morning. I believe he will advance us sixty-five per cent on our accounts receivable.” He tried on a cynical smile. It didn’t become him. “Norris, you are what is technically called a Publisher’s Bright Young Man. We can get seven-fifty for a scholarly book. With luck and promotion we can sell in the hundred thousands. Get on it.” I nodded, feeling sick, and started out. Mr. Hopedale said in a tired voice: “And it might actually be work of some inspirational value.”