The Seeds of Time

Foreword

THE best definition of the science-fiction story that I know is Mr Edmund Crispin’s: that it ‘is one which presupposes a technology, or an effect of technology, or a disturbance in the natural order, such as humanity, up to the time of writing, has not in actual fact experienced.’

The disposition of something like ninety per cent of science-fiction to use this definition only in conjunction with the adventure-narrative form of story is primarily an accident of commercial exploitation, and an unfortunate one that makes it difficult to see the trees for the wood.

When, a good many years ago now, I first happened upon magazines that specialized in stories of the kind, their proprietors had already concocted the formula which they knew, with that conviction that sustains minor showmen everywhere, to be the only one that the public would stand for and pay for; and almost the only reason for not dismissing their productions forthwith was the occasional discovery of the different story that had somehow got under their guard.

In general, the formula has been preserved so that even now, after twenty-five years, the bulk of science-fiction, and its adaptations to film and broadcast serial form, has been determinedly kept in the cliff-hanger class.

Nevertheless, there came a time when certain editors grew mildly mutinous with the perception that the terms of reference did not truly restrict them to the adventures of galactic gangsters in space-opera, and they began, some by stealth, others by declaration, to encourage their authors to do a bit more exploration within the definition.

With that, the field became open to experiments, and the nine stories I have chosen here are (or were) virtually experiments, made at intervals during fifteen years, in adapting the science-fiction motif to various styles of short story. The earliest, Meteor, is closest to the usual adventure-narrative, and was written to suit a pre-war editor (though its beginning was later adapted a little for post-war republication).

Taking a look at science-fiction again after a wartime interval, one seemed to see indications that it was trying to change its spots. This idea set off the somewhat pastoral Time to Rest. It was swiftly returned by an American agent with the hurt reproof that it wouldn’t do at all: this kind of thing, as I ought to know, hadn’t a chance unless it was packed full of adjectives and action. However, it did later on appear in four periodicals and two anthologies, so I felt better about it.

Meanwhile, Pillar to Post, written to suit, I hoped, the policy of a newly arisen American magazine, came near enough to it to be accepted and afterwards anthologized. After that, I rather gave up other people’s policies, and tried various styles. The intention of Chronoclasm, in the comedy-romantic, was to entertain the general reader and break away from the science-fiction enthusiast. Pawley’s Peepholes is satirical farce. Opposite Number attempts, with perhaps qualified success, the light presentation of a somewhat complicated idea. For Dumb Martian and Survival I tried to use the pattern of the English short-story in its heyday. Compassion Circuit is the short horror-story. A neo-Gothick trifle, could one say? And finally there is Wild Flower where one has encouraged science-fiction to try the form of the modern short-story.

In the careers of these stories my debts have become too widely spread to be acknowledged here with the detail one could wish, and since it would be invidious to mention only some editors and their periodicals, I must have recourse to the collective (and the order of the alphabet). Thus, with a great deal more gratitude than adequacy, I fear, I take this opportunity of thanking those editors, a number of whom I can never hope to meet, in Australia, France, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, South Africa, Sweden, and the U.S.A. who have so much encouraged me by printing one or more of these experiments on the theme: ‘I wonder what might happen if…?’

j. w.