The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

“When Darwin and Wallace propounded the theory of evolution in the middle of the last century, it was explicitly stated that man is no longer subject to evolutionary processes. ... I do not think that we control the future at all, and I do not think that we are in any way free from, the evolutionary process.”

The quotation is from Of Men and Galaxies by cosmologist (and SF writer) Fred Hoyle, who argues that human evolution is no longer determined by the physical environment, but by “the things we know and the things we believe. ... We cannot think outside the patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or to be more accurate, we can think only a little outside, and then only if we are very original.” And, “New concepts are like genetic mutations . . . most of them turn out badly. But without mutations there can be no evolution.”

If there is a Significance to science fiction—a capital-S sort of thing—I think it lies in this area. Not only does it provide a platform for speculation and prophecy, but by giving voice to what Hoyle calls the “very original,” it attracts other original minds—both as readers and writers.

The “mutant concepts” then fall on the most favorable soil; if they are viable, they will grow and multiply. More important, perhaps, is the chain-reaction effect that sets in (to create a sort of environment within the environment) as the new concepts of original minds become a part of the “conditioning” of others—who are thus freed a bit more for more original thinking.

The first generation of what might be called the “science-fiction community” (beginning in the twenties) did much of the “mutant” thinking that energized the development of atomic power and space flight. The present generation is dealing with concepts in very different areas—and one clue to the “mutation” process is the identity of the new writers.

I have mentioned the newsmen. Dr. Nesvadba (with Romain Gary, Frank Roberts, José Gironella, Isaac B. Singer) represents another trend. A prominent Czechoslovak psychiatrist, he is also a widely published journalist and short-story writer. His work, he writes, is in “psychotherapy, group psychotherapy, and artetherapy; hobby is literature.” He has published five books of SF (only one Vampires, Ltd., in English); three of his stories have been made into Czech films, and “Last Secret” (which has also been translated into German, French, Russian, Polish, Serbocroatian, Yugoslav, and Hungarian) is now being filmed for TV.

I met Dr. Nesvadba at a science-fiction convention in 1964 (and can report that he is charming, witty, and devastatingly Continental). It was, I believe, his first trip to this country. The last night, he spent some hours with John Brunner, Fritz Leiber, and myself.

“I recollect perfectly that evening and morning. Although we have so quite different backgrounds and case histories, as we say in medicine, our outlook seems to be roughly the same, our problems seem to be the same, and perhaps it is not so bad with our world after all, when this is possible.”