The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

SUMMATION Judith Merril

“There have been more changes in the past 65 years than in all other centuries put together. No longer do most people believe in the orderly progression of cause and effect; no longer do they believe in the natural goodness of man and the inevitability of progress. Stability is gone. This is an era of quibble, doubt, and qualm. Science, technology, art, architecture, music, literature have all acquired new values, and revolutionary conflicts rage.”

Call that one #1. (Here’s your chance to see if you can tell the writers from the scientists, or the mainstream from SF.)

#2: “I am going to make one big hypothesis—a religious hypothesis —that the emergence of intelligent life is not a meaningless accident. But I am not going to follow orthodox religions by presuming that I know what the meaning is.. . . Let us see how much of the plan we can discover.”

#3: “The next great breakthrough in science—the breakthrough that will have the kind of impact on us all that the Hiroshima bomb had —will be in the area of psychophysiology: mind and brain. And the man who will bring it about walks the earth today.”

(#4, “Today, science stands fair to join Religion, Motherhood, and the Flag as a domain so sacrosanct and so sanctimonious, that leg-pulling isn’t allowed, levity is forbidden, and smiling is scowled at.”

(Three of these nine quotes are by tried-and-true science-fiction writers; three are by scientists; three by serious writers.)

#5: “At any given time recording devices fix the nature of absolute need and dictate the use of total weapons—like this: Take two opposed pressure groups. Record the most violent and threatening statements of group one with regard to group two. Record the answer and take it back to group one—back and forth between opposed pressure groups. This process is known as feed back. You can see it operating in any barroom quarrel—in any quarrel for that matter. Manipulated on a global scale feeds back nuclear war . . .”

#6: “Each of us wants what Ponce de Leon wanted, and unless the road maps are all wrong, we are well on our way to finding it. . . . It is, in fact, a good betting probability that some of us, and perhaps a great many of us, may never have to die at all.”

(Well, perhaps I made it sound a little less complex than it is; at least one of these authors spreads over all three categories, and three of those in the “scientist” and “serious” groups have written some science fiction.)

#7: “I believe it is realistic to say that the manned lunar program will be carried to a successful conclusion in spite of the wafted time and cost; but let’s be clear. This isn’t science. It’s adventure and propaganda.”

(For purposes of the Concept Guessing Game, I am considering Arthur C. Clarke a science-fiction writer, along with Frederik Pohl and Theodore Sturgeon.)

#8: “We need very urgently to know that we are not strangers and aliens in the physical universe. ... We did not arrive like birds on barren branches; we grew out of this world, like leaves and fruit. Our universe “humans” just as a rosebush “flowers.” We are living in a world where men all over the planet are linked by an immense network of communications, and where science has made us theoretically aware of our interdependence with the entire domain of organic and inorganic nature.”

(The three scientists: Philip Abelson, editor of Science; Fred Hoyle, cosmologist; James V. McConnell, comparative psychologist.)

#9: “The most controversial, and widely criticized of all space experiments took place in mid-Pacific on July 8, 1963, when . . . the AEC and the Department of Defense detonated a megaton bomb 200 miles above Johnston Island. (Sociological note: In the press releases, it’s always a “nuclear device.” I say it’s a bomb, but I say the hell with it.)”

(And seriously three more: William S. Burroughs, of Naked Lunch, etc.; John Gunther, Inside author; Alan Watts, Zen philosopher-theologian.)

The answers are here; you’ll get to them. But if you make an honest try at matching them up first for yourself, you may get my point better. SF has become more sophisticated, as well as more literate. We can no longer rely on flashing-panel gadgets or mad scientists, any more than on poor prose or flamboyant illustrations, to set it apart from other literature. Nor can we determine the nature from the source: there are comparatively few specialty magazines, and any publication is likely to carry some SF. Presumably, the distinctive quality is in the concepts; and if the SF writer’s ideas are different from other people’s, it ought to show up In such vigorous statements as those above.

(Burroughs, Hoyle, and McConnell are the three who have written some SF; does that help?)

Throughout this volume, I have been pointing out the meeting places on the literary scene where the once-sequestered science-fictionist now mingles freely with the journalist, the experimentalist, the poet and philosopher, and an occasional visitor from the academic or international world of letters. I have mentioned the journalists, and the newsmen in particular, who have made their way onto the SF scene— as well as the students and avant-gardistes. But there is another change in the author statistics that is more significant.

Most of the people included in this Tenth Annual are mostly-writers: that is, writing is the occupation by which they earn their living, and with which they would have to fill in tax returns and credit applications. Fully half of them this year are full-time free-lancers—and half of the balance have writing jobs.

Ten years ago, when I began editing this series, the number of people writing SF who did not have other jobs was very small (and the number of full-time SF-writers smaller yet, by far). The average contributor was either a spare-time science-fictionist—a scientist, technician, teacher, doctor, what-have-you?—who regarded his writing as a second profession, and probably wrote only SF, or a would-be freelancer who took his writing seriously enough, but still had to have an outside job to eat on.

Nine of the authors in this book have nonwriting jobs (and “non-writing” includes the PR men and English professor).

Let me hasten to make clear that the change has not occurred because science-fiction writing has become a lucrative business. It is quite as miserably underpaid as it used to be. The difference is, simply, and once again, that the distinction between the specialty writer and the writer-in-general has almost vanished. For instance—

The Big Names of SF—the names everybody knows—Sturgeon, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke—how many of them are actually “SF writers” today? Only Heinlein still writes primarily in the genre.

Conversely, the best new names in the field, this last decade, are almost all either young writers of serious literary intentions, who regard SF as one of their preferred modes of expression (Aandahl, Aldiss, Davidson, Ellison, Sheckley, Wilhelm, to name a few who do not happen to be represented this year); or already established writers just discovering the uses of the speculative and imaginative techniques (George P. Elliott, “Cordwainer Smith,” John Hersey, Charles Einstein, Graham Greene, for instance).

(All right, you can start eliminating. Numbers 1, 2, and 3 are, respectively, John Gunther, in Look magazine’s special “Inside the Twentieth Century” issue, January 12, 1965; Fred Hoyle, in Of Men and Galaxies, University of Washington Press, 1964; Theodore Sturgeon, in IF magazine, March, 1964. Try again on the other six.)

Or look at the new books.

Unfortunately, Anthony Boucher is no longer reviewing SF regularly enough to continue his annual surveys for these anthologies. I did not seek to replace him (as how could one, in any case?) this year, because at the time I received his regrets, I had just started, myself, to do reviews for Fantasy and Science Fiction—the same column Boucher had brightened with his unique style and erudition for the first ten years of the magazine’s history. I cannot speak comprehensively of the 1964 books: I started too late for that. But there are some comments I can make on the basis of the past six months, and one of them is about the books that are sent to a magazine with a name like Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Of course, everything on the various publishers’ “science-fiction category” lists comes in (including re-re-re-reprints of Edgar Rice Burroughs). Almost any other fiction has to be asked for specifically: for instance, Simon & Schuster publishes John Christopher, but not on their “science-fiction list,” for some reason; we had to ask for a copy of Sweeney’s Island, just as we did for Hersey’s White Lotus (Knopf, 1965) and Burroughs’ Nova Express (Grove, 1965)—and was glad I had asked, with Christopher and Burroughs. Hersey was sadly disappointing, after The Child Buyer the year before.

(Nova Express is the source for Quote #5; and I must admit I cheated slightly on this one, and changed Burroughs’ unmistakable punctuation to a more conventional system, to make it less obvious.)

We got Singer’s Short Friday (Farrar, 1964) and McConnell’s The Worm Returns (Prentice-Hall, 1965), but not Gironella’s Phantoms and Fugitives (Sheed and Ward, 1964), or Gary’s Hissing Tales, although Harper & Row did send Fred Hoyle and John Elliot’s Andromeda Breakthrough.

(#4, by the way, is from McConnell’s “Compulsory Preface” in The Worm Re-Turns.)

Holt sent Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (a non-SF novel, full of references to science fiction, by an author associated with the genre—and God bless Holt for publishing it!) but New Directions did not send their enlarged 1965 reissue of Jorge Luis Borges’ remarkable Labyrinths, nor did Viking send R. K. Narayan’s fine collection of Indian legends, Gods, Demons, and Others (1964).

Snobbishness or confusion? It is hard to say; but easy enough to see that someone, somewhere, needs to take a long, fresh look at this mixed-up business of literary “categories.”

In some ways, the nonfiction submissions are even more curious: we got Sullivan’s superb We Are Not Alone (McGraw-Hill, 1964), and Bonestell-Ley’s Beyond the Solar System (Viking, 1964), but not Arthur C. Clarke’s Man in Space (Life Library, 1964); we were sent Rosalind Heywood’s ESP: A Personal Memoir (Dutton, 1964)—one of the most sensible, as well as best-written, books on the subject I’ve ever seen— but not David Solomon’s fascinating anthology of articles, LSD, The Consciousness-Expanding Drug (Putnam, 1964).

(Alan Watts’ selection in LSD was the source for #8.)

If I seem to be saying that the situation is just as confused one place as another—why, it’s only because that is what I mean to say. With the final criterion of authorship slipping out from under them, publishers, general reviewers, and the poor book salesmen have no way to tell their friends from SF.

(And how much better did you do? The last three mix-matches: #6 is by Frederik Pohl, from “Intimations of Immortality,” in Playboy, June, 1964. #7 is by Philip Abelson, quoted in an article, “$30,000,-000,000 Trip to the Moon,” in Cosmopolitan, October, 1964. #9 is from Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Meddlers,” in Playboy, March, 1964.)

There is, however, still some small area of solid ground, and within its limits, some items of interest to mention; for instance—

SF Horizons, a new British periodical devoted to criticism, edited by Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss. The first issue contained a particularly interesting taped discussion between C. S. Lewis, Kingsley Amis, and Aldiss.

Extrapolation, a science-fiction newsletter published by the Conference on Science-Fiction of the Modern Language Association—a fine, scholarly critical journal.

And Double : Bill. Those of you who saw the Ninth Annual will recall my discussion at some length of the survey conducted for this fan publication by Lloyd Biggie. I based my comments, and the list of participants, on two installments of the survey—and discovered too late that there was a third I had not yet received. There is little to add to the conclusions, but I should like to include now the names of the remainder of participating authors: Charles Beaumont, James Blish, Anthony Boucher, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Reginald Bretnor, Terry Carr, Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Avram Davidson, Lester Del Rey, August Derleth, Horace Gold, Edmond Hamilton, Joe Hensley, Robert W. Lowndes, Richard Lupoff, Mack Reynolds, Eric Frank Russell, James H. Schmitz, Robert Silverberg, E. E. “Doc” Smith, George 0. Smith, William Temple, Theodore Thomas, Ted White, Kate Wilhelm, Jack Williamson and Robert F. Young.

Finally, I should like to express my thanks to some of the many people whose interest and assistance is necessary to make a volume of this sort at all possible. For suggestions of inclusions, and assistance in obtaining material, much thanks to Barbara Norville, Eva Mo-Kenna, Margaret Scoggins, Francesca van der Ling, Anthony Boucher, Ed Ferman, Dick Wilson, and the infinitely patient librarians at the Port Jervis, N.Y., Public Library. For clerical help, messenger service, and an assortment of literary bottle-washing jobs, my sincere gratitude to Karen Emden, Ann Pohl, Rick Raphael, and John Walter. For critical reactions, my thanks to Virginia Kidd Blish, Seymour Krim, Fritz Leiber, and the panel of Teen-Age Book Reviewers introduced to me by Miss Scoggins, who heads the Young Adult Services at the New York Public Library. And my most earnest appreciation to Bob Silverstein, for some of all the foregoing, but even more for a rare and admirable editorial restraint

Judith Merril

April, 1965