The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

THE NEW ENCYCLOPAEDIST Stephen Becker

Gill, Robert 1930-2022

Leader of the “Irreconcilables” and one of the founders of our present civilization. The Irreconcilables refused, on the grounds of good taste and “freedom of association,” to join their fellow citizens in the vast, complex network of underground shelters constructed by “Civil Defense” authorities (à Opera Buffa) between 1965 and 1970 at the cost of all the prosperity, liberties, and amenities that free men everywhere were struggling for. “Gill’s Bull” predicted accurately that underground society would necessarily be authoritarian. During the Great Alert of 1973 some 30,000 Irreconcilables remained above ground. When, because all potential enemies were also underground, nothing happened during the obligatory sixty-day period, and populations sheepishly regained the surface, Gill delivered his famous Report: “The West Side Highway was clear; there were no schoolchildren in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and there was no television. We all caught up on our correspondence.” As a consequence, during the Second Great Alert of 1977, the populations refused to go underground; the Irreconcilables therefore did, and enjoyed sixty days of luxurious solitude, gourmandise, and meditation, making free use of the libraries, cinemas, galleries, monorails, and restaurants planned for a subcivilization of 200,000,000 people. Emerging after two months, they found a world barren of life except for their counterparts in other nations, though many buildings, vehicles, power plants, etc., were perfectly usable. From these groups sprang our present highly literate, healthy, and peaceable world population of 12,-000,000, including only three psychiatrists and no soldiers. (à Quantum Jump; also Darwin, Charles and “Survival of the Fittest.”)

Porphyry, Jasper 1935-2014).

Enunciator of Porphyry’s Categories, P’s Lament; instigator of P’s Literary Schizophrenia. The Categories (1968) were an American literary achievement, and were three. (1) comprised 90% of the writers of the time. Their “talent,” as described by P, consisted of a middling facility in the manipulation of a minimal vocabulary rudimentary perceptions; unsullied ignorance of man’s history; disdain of reason; and a violent, probably psychotic, attachment to the sentimental. Writers of this group were barely distinguishable in style or attitude and naturally set great store by publicity, as only the public’s automatic responses (àPavlov, I.P.) maintained them. They accepted without question the prevalent mythos (then known as “reality”) and manufactured novel after novel in its support, almost all about hanky-panky (urban, suburban, rural), with animadversions on the “emotional” conflicts of the era, which were not truly emotional, but simple oppositions of childish egos or absurd fears. These writers were essentially masochistic and their technique was in the juvenile tradition: an uninterrupted series of insignificant events in the lives of unbelievable characters, reported in conscientiously pedestrian prose. This was called “the writer’s obligation to the reader,” or “narrative power,” the latter a phrase used often by reviewers, seldom by critics. First novels by any of this group were usually said either to have “catapulted him into the first rank of American novelists” or to “show an immense promise.”

(2) were the opposition, sometimes called the avant-garde. They protested the mythos angrily but failed to see that by doing so they were investing it with all the power the Yahoos had claimed for it (àSwift, Jonathan). Their protests naturally failed to reform society and were consequently characterized, and vitiated, by a progressively surlier sadism. These men did, however, rouse the public to an imitation of thought. A few had a serious talent for language and some understanding of their culture, and when they resisted absorption by the equestrian classes they were an influence for awareness and sanity. They were called anti-Puritans, and were said to concentrate on sex. P pointed out that a typewriter was not a woman.

(3) was a woefully small group that looked upon the mythos with generous compassion and therefore transcended it. In a professional sense they were somewhat indifferent to it. They were required for survival to acknowledge it, but in their novels they went about the business of a writer, which was, again in P’s words, “to get inside readers by making them feel what they are, and not by piercing them with exclamation points.” They derived neither from àRichardson and àRonsard nor from àDostoievski and àZola, but from àRabelais, àCervantes, and àFielding. Each had an individual and arresting style. They all knew how to laugh. They enlarged their readers. This third force of novelists (not to be lightly confused with the political third force of the time) did, as we know, endure. (àBellow, Saul; Cheever, John)

P’s Lament and P’s Literary Schizophrenia rose out of the debasement of language. The extravagantly publicized new edition of an authoritative American dictionary sanctioned the use of “infer” for “imply,” which the average man found convenient; in no time at all “humble” meant “proud” (àTheology), etc., and the number of words in use dropped sharply, making all men intellectual equals (àOrwell, George). A logical result was “speed-reading.” If meaning had no importance, and the act of communicating was all, then writing could be evaluated only quantitatively. (This was a great comfort to Category (1), above.) The fad was much exalted by a Chief Executive, probably in understandable reaction to the even more debatable linquistic achievements of the preceding administration. “Five thousand words per minute” replaced automobiles and tax evasion as symbols of status, and when a United States Senator dropped the phrase “ten thousand words per minute,” P responded with his famous Lament: “I write slow,” he said. “I hate the four-eyed son of a bitch.” He had just spent a year on a novel of one hundred thousand words that would occupy the Senator for only ten minutes, and there was always a chance that the Senator would review it. P then introduced a new technique that made speed-reading virtually impossible: he spaced hi swo rd sandle tter sir regul arly. He was aware that certain mental disorders could be brought on by flashing lights, repeated sounds, etc. (àAdvertising Industry), and was gratified when a new malady, deliberately induced by young writers who joined him, and characterized by stammering, blood-shot eyes, and partial amnesia, was named P’s Literary Schizophrenia. Shortly the fads ended; words like “disinterested,” “presently,” and “hopefully” were restored to proper use; intelligibility in prose composition was required of all university professors except, of course, in metaphysics. There is a statue of P adjacent to the Jefferson Monument àJefferson, Thomas; also Style) in Washington, D.C.

Newhouse, John Jacob 1914-1977).

United States Senator from Alaska, 1963-77. The years 1970 and 1971 are called the “era of Newhousery.” The production and commercial success of several Russo-American films had temporarily reduced international tensions; certain House and Senate Investigating Committees faced the loss of appropriations in a long-awaited orgy of economy. N saved the day by an oration in North Judson, Indiana, warning that America was in grave danger of subversion, rot of moral fibre, and financial ruin through the machinations of adulterers, who, he claimed, had infiltrated all levels of national life. He then charged that there were 253 adulterers in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and his speech was given great publicity. He later reduced the figure to 81, and still later to 52, but by then it was generally agreed that he had alerted patriotic citizens to a serious peril.

Hearings were begun at once, with full television coverage. Particular attention was focused on aliens and college graduates. A small group of writers protested; they were immediately subpoenaed by the Newhouse Committee. Most took refuge in the First or Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, and became the core of an organized resistance; their slogan was “A gentleman may poach but not peach.” Thousands everywhere were identified as known offenders by cooperative witnesses, many of whom were remunerated for their time and trouble; federal employment increased by 14.5% during the first three months of hearings. These witnesses testified that they had been present at gatherings in various parts of the country ostensibly arranged for the purpose of drinking, playing cards, folk dancing, etc., but which were actually corroborees of the licentious. The evidence was often not direct but circumstantial: winking, off-color stories, removal of shoes, unexplained absences in the kitchen. The guilty were said to be in constant and nationwide communication, exchanging names and addresses and transmitting messages in code—a bouquet of orchids might mean one thing, a bottle of champagne another, etc. For their expertise in these arcana reformed professional women were highly valued; some remained closeted with investigators for hours on end, and produced exhaustive lists of putative offenders. Presumed conspirators often lost their jobs and the esteem of their neighbors; they were denied federal or state employment, and were exposed when found in sensitive positions.

The moral climate became generally severe. Metropolitan areas reported numerous vacancies in small, expensive apartments. The Furriers’ Association marched on Washington. All printed matter from Sweden was banned. Private groups sprang up to support the government’s policies, e.g. the Cos Cob Chastity Crusade and the Boo-Boo Caraway Society, named for the first American woman since 1945 to be betrayed by Kummel. Many citizens demonstrated good faith by compiling dossiers on their neighbors. Bausch and Lomb announced an extra dividend. The Newhouse Act prohibited the teaching and advocacy, or conspiracy to teach and advocate, “any doctrine or practice that might tend to suggest the possibility of immorality,” and was passed over only two dissenting votes, both by elderly Senators. Librarians winnowed their shelves, removing, e.g., the works of àDante, àShakespeare, and àElinor Glyn; a new edition of àLouisa May Alcott was instantly successful. The two elections of àGrover Cleveland were retroactively invalidated; after a Democratic protest, àWarren G. Harding’s victory was also voided. Europeans were horrified by these events; France withdrew from NATO, and àGeneral de Gaulle stated publicly that so excitable a people could not be trusted with the destinies of free men (‘Ils sont cinglés là-bas”).

The first effective resistance was offered by Dr. Leo Douglas, a psychiatrist in Cleveland, Ohio, who affirmed unblushingly that he knew several people who had transgressed from the noblest of motives, and who were a credit to humanity; but he declined to name them. Rebuked and threatened by N, Douglas then declared that any investigation of the practice, or legislation limiting it, was an infringement of his rights under the First Amendment—not of his freedom of speech, but of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” N pointed out that the legal definition of “assembly” specified “three or more people,” and the doctor’s reply (“Douglas’s Riposte”) was, “You run your private life and I’ll run mine.” He was convicted of contempt, but his appeal was sustained by the Supreme Court. N then turned his attention to the United States Navy; he persisted in asking who had promoted Lieutenant-Commander Wycherly, a notoriously suave fire-control officer reputed to have cut a suspicious series of notches in his slide-rule. But the hearings had by then lost much of their point, thanks to Douglas, and the Navy, jealous of its traditions, refused to be intimidated. The investigation lost momentum, and finally came to a halt with the appearance of Bubbles Freeburk of Elgin, Illinois, who, paradoxically, never even testified. As she entered the chamber N was observed to blench, and the proceedings were halted until a doctor could be found. The committee never sat again. N died in the Great Holocaust, during a Senate debate on the appropriation for anti-missile missiles.