The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

SUMMATION: SF, 1963 by Judith Merril

Never before have so many been threatened with so much.

If the fallout doesn’t get you, the fault slip will. The next ice age, we are shiveringly reminded, is practically upon us. It may be a matter of only thousands, or hundreds, of generations before our sun goes nova. And if neither natural nor man-made Doomsday befall us, it will be not hundreds, but ten or less generations before we must cope with the prospects of starvation—or suffocation—in the foul-aired plankton-fed single supermegapolis of Earth’s sardine-can-packed population.

It is not that the dangers are new: just that we are newly aware of them.

Never has so much been promised to so many.

The wealth of our technological civilization, today, is beyond the wildest fantasies of earlier times: wealth measured not in such abstractions as “capital goods” or “national incomes,” but in the actualities of physical comfort, health, leisure, longevity, and even that most vital (and most alienable) of “natural rights,” the freedom-and-capacity to pursue individual happiness.

That wealth, like technology, is unevenly distributed, we know. But even the most horrifying (to us) conditions of life on Earth today were only the norm for the human condition until a few scant centuries ago. (Neither Plato nor Lao-tse would have paused long in their dialogues on politics or morality, to be shocked at the deaths of four children in a rebellion-quelling like Birmingham’s bombing. Apartheid standards of living would have seemed slave-coddling to Cheops or Genghis Khan. The civil rights available to a Red Chinese peasant today would have dazzled a serf in the kitchens of Louis XIV of France.) And the increment in knowledge and productivity continues to accelerate while it spreads. The real-wealth potential is constantly greater both in total quantity and in wide availability.

The resources of our world are not new; we have just started to make use of them.

Never has so much uncertainty been felt by so many.

In our relations with the physical environment, we first learned simple skills to use it, then acquired some understanding of it) only then could we start to remake it to our advantage. The accumulation of observations by countless naturalists and discoverers provided a basis for analytical science; the scientist’s hypothesis-and-experiment is the base on which the inventor and engineer stand.

As far back as any history goes, human beings have observed each other; primitive techniques for controlling and utilizing human intelligence and personality were discovered in the age of myths. But the first systematic, analytic, scientific studies of mankind by man began barely a century ago—five hundred years behind physical science. If the rate of progress has been swifter, it is because we had already learned something of the techniques of scientific investigation, and because we now have the products of earlier sciences to use as tools and mirrors for self-study. (Electroencephalography probes and measures the functions of the brain; a cybernetic machine mirrors it.)

We are now rapidly approaching the kind of understanding of our own thoughts, emotions, capacities, and behavior which will, abruptly (next year? next decade?), break through to the level of application and invention. The true science of humanics, when it emerges, will of necessity convey the power to remake our intellects and personalities to our advantage... or lo our final doom.

The concept of self-determination is not new; but we are now about to acquire the capacity for it.

Science fantasy is not so new now either; it has apparently just, reached the level of self-consciousness. That is: never before has so much been published by or about writers and writing of speculative fiction.

There was the usual scattering of individual items:

Fredric Brown had a page of poetic definition in Fantasy and Science Fiction. Isaac Asimov had two pages in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, urging the use of an early taste for good science fiction as a selection test for creative scientific potential more effective than any combination of intelligence, aptitude, and personality tests now in use in our schools.

Walt Kelly had four pages in the Atlantic: “Ka-Platz! The Delight in the Unexpected.” Robert Bloch devoted his column in one issue of Rogue to the annual World Science Fiction Convention. At least two pieces by Soviet authors appeared here: one by Arkadi Strugatsky, in USSR, about Soviet science fiction; and “A Soviet View of American Science Fiction,” by Alexander Karantsev, in Amazing.

The first series of Sam Moskowitz’s bibliographic biographies of leading writers in the genre appeared in book form as Explorers of the Infinite (World Publishing Company, 1963). Michael Moorcock began a series which has since completed a scholarly analysis of fantasy fiction, in Science Fantasy. Life had a lengthy photo-biographic essay on Hugo Gernsback and “scientifiction.”

In addition to these individual statements, some fifty-two writers of s-f, and nine assorted editors, agents, reviewers, producers, publishers, etc., [A list of the participants will be found at the end of the Summation.] were involved in three separate publishing ventures: the Playboy symposium, the Double Bill survey, and a series of guest editorials in New Worlds.

The opinions expressed in the editorials would take too much space to summarize individually; as a group, they fall largely within the range of attitudes more concisely formulated in the Double Bill survey.

The questionnaire, compiled by Lloyd Biggie, Jr., asked eleven questions, most of which concentrated on advice to new writers. The three that evoked the most widely interesting responses were the raison d’être question quoted earlier, and these two: “For what reason or reasons do you write (or edit) science fiction in preference to other forms of literature?” and “What is your appraisal of the relationship of science fiction to the ‘mainstream’ of literature?”

Among forty-three participants, there were at least six or seven distinct notions of what “mainstream” meant—and even more differences about the relationship between mainstream and s-f. Some felt the first was a subdivision of the second; some that the second was a subdivision of the first; and some said there was no real distinction between the two, except that imposed by artificial labels. A large and vigorous minority felt the two forms are radically different and probably will not—certainly should not—merge and lose their separate identities. And cutting across all other differences (except among those who saw none) was a roughly half-and-half split on which is “better” literature.

In view of all these permutations of disagreement, the dear-cul response on the other two questions is startling. Discounting the several authors who gave as. reason for personal preference, “easier to write and sell” or “entertainment” as the major significance (since these are applicable to any field in which a writer happens to work), the overwhelming majority gave as their main answer to both these questions the freedom offered in s-f, as compared with other contemporary forms: freedom to express any and all opinions, to explore unconventional and unpopular ideas, to examine human problems and relationships, and to experiment with style and technique. (“It stretches the imagination.” “I am a surrealist at heart.” “The most iconoclastic form of literature.” Or John Campbell’s, “There’s room to think and move.”)

Next most important, and mentioned by at least half the authors, was the use of s-f (in this case primarily science fiction) as a learning medium. For some, this meant simply a vehicle for teaching (or preaching); others—and rather more—were interested in what they themselves learned, both as readers and writers) the largest number referred to the sheer intellectual exercise involved. (“Mind-stretching.” “Exhilaration.” “Kicks.” “Creative challenge.”)

The Playboy discussion was a showcase for this kind of, thought-kick. The twelve participants were invited, not to discuss their work, but to demonstrate it. Although the published version did not appear until the summer of 1963, the project was initiated almost a year earlier, at a taped midnight discussion during the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1962.

Seven of the final panel members were present at that first session, and it was the only actual “session.” Many tapes and mailings later, much-revised and re-exchanged, the symposium emerged as a wide-ranging, colorful résumé of science-fiction thinking over the past twenty-five years. If there was a certain lack of freshness of Idea, at least for the case-hardened s-f reader, in most of the subjects covered (space race, aliens, nuclear war, population explosion, genetic control, ocean farming, automation, robots, transportation and communication), it was a different matter when the discussion turned to the prospects for what I have called here humanics.

This is, of course, the true frontier of science in our day. When we have crossed it, we may come to new perceptions which will require a genuine re-evaluation of our understanding of the physical world. But for now, outside the most esoteric work in cosmology and, on the other end, subnudeonics, the largest part of our physical science is in the engineering stage. And by definition, it is where the breakthroughs are just about to come, that speculative fiction becomes exciting and fruitful.

Among the subjects covered were psychochemicals, as specifics for mental disease, as education conditioners, as sleep substitutes, and as pleasure enhancers; current work in mapping the brain with psycho-electronics, and the possibilities of its application in all the areas mentioned above; progress in medicine, surgery, and cybernetics, toward the total elimination of physical disease—and for a dramatic increase in the ordinary lifespan; the use of cryogenics to preserve bodies until new biochemical or surgical techniques are available; and of course the effects of these developments, and of other aspects of technology already in hand, on the sexual, domestic, intellectual, ethical, religious, and social behavior of human beings.

Lightly touched on, here and there, were the upheavals in economics, politics, religion, and education, which are already irrevocably under way, as a result of automation and communications advances—but which are still due for much more radical changes as psychological and physiological innovations occur, and as the more adventurous engineering research projects begin to bear fruit: broadcast power (solar or atomic), domestic automation, exploration of the solar system; or, less Immediate, antigravity and perhaps the matter duplicator.

Noticeably absent from the discussion were two major themes of the last generation of science fiction: time travel and ESP. In the case of time travel, one might feel the vein has been thoroughly worked; pending new information, there is nothing much more to be said. But ESP, or “psionics,” has been one of the most active areas of inquiry in the past decade, and still is. Presumably, Playboy is happy to be unconventional and iconoclastic, and willing to give space to eccentric or even possibly subversive ideas, but not quite prepared to be called “crackpot.”

This distinction—and I mean “honor”—belongs to the specialty science-fiction magazines. (Remember—it was crackpot, not long ago, to believe in the future of rocketry or space travel; and that “crackpots” was security-guard slang for Manhattan District scientists.) It was precisely this extra dimension of freedom of thought that the writers were talking about in the Double Bill survey. It was in terms of this much latitude that Campbell said, “There’s room to think and move.”

The increasing pressures for conformity and homogeneity in today’s culture are unfortunately not limited to suburban housing developments, clothing styles, or automobile shapes; nor even to the more rigid areas of religion, politics, and education. They work on science, art, and philosophy as well.

These pressures are not new. In the past they have operated against rationalism and scientific inquiry, even as today they inveigh against what institutionalized science finds irrational. At the height of the Inquisition, Johannes Kepler could publish his theories only as science fiction in Journeys to the Moon. In our present-day commonsensical philosophic atmosphere, imaginative literature still gives scope to inquiry in those areas of human experience not recognized by any currently sanctified systems of classification. When the vast body of phenomena now stigmatized by association with “magic” and “mysticism” are finally incorporated into a more inclusive view of nature and cosmology, some of the credit, one hopes, will go to the free-wheeling thinkers who are now busily prying the lid off Pandora’s psi box, and to the magazines and editors who are providing the outlet for “crackpot” ideas.

This is perhaps the place to record my deep sense of loss—both personal and literary—at the death of Mark Clifton, in the fall of 1963. The first Clifton story, “What Have I Done?” appeared in Astounding (forerunner of Analog) in May, 1952, and shortly afterward in my anthology, Beyond Human Ken. Our first exchange of business letters turned quickly to a voluminous and stimulating correspondence which continued, with only occasional breaks, until his final illness. His active career in science fiction was short; there were five or six years during which his work appeared regularly; after that, only occasional short stories and one recent novel.

When he started writing, Mark had already retired as a semi-invalid from a long and successful career in personnel work and industrial relations. He was fascinated by people; he knew people; he cared about people. He wrote about them, when he had to slop working directly with them. He was passionately concerned with the necessity for integrating the humanist and scientific viewpoints in our time; tirelessly curious about everything people do, and why and how; often frighteningly dear-eyed in his insights.

I do not know whether it was Mark, or John Campbell, who coined the word psionics, but it had its first currency during “the Clifton period” in Astounding. He broke ground for a dozen new roads of thought that are still being traveled, explored, exploited, by writers today—roads leading to greater comprehension of human behavior, and in particular to those “crackpot” areas of the psi functions.

His work was sometimes too crude in style for my taste, although he could, and occasionally did (as with that first story), write with elegance; he was usually concerned only with speaking clearly and loudly. He knew from the first that even in science fiction there would be a large and unmovable block of readers, editors, and other writers who would shudder fastidiously at his “crackpot” thinking.

I tried to convince him that he could woo many of them with more attention to style. He did not care. He had a lot to say, and he always knew he did not have time enough. He was tired when he started. But he wanted to get everything he had learned, and everything he had learned to wonder about, down on paper for the young minds, the fresh minds, the readers whose thinking had not yet set into molds.

I know he died dissatisfied; it was not in Mark to be satisfied; there was always something more. But as I read the work of the new young writers, I know how much more he accomplished than he would ever have believed.

Two other writers of special interest, to this field died last year, but both were essentially “mainstream” writers, and have received their literary funeral orations elsewhere.

William Lindsay Gresham will be best remembered for his vivid novel of carnival life. Nightmare Alley, but he was also the author of some first-rate science fantasy.

C. S. Lewis was eulogized—among other places—in Edmund Fuller’s regular column in the Sunday Times Book Review, and Mr. Fuller took the occasion to discuss imaginative literature in general: “Good fantasy is not escapist in the pejorative sense of the word. It may offer temporary refuge and relief from the pressure of the immediate world, but at the same time we are given new perceptions of our actual lives. ... Fantasy is an art of equivalents,” and, he concluded, “opens to writers the added dimensions needed to grapple with immense, awesome realities in our potentially apocalyptic age.”

Few mainstream critics approach a work of fantasy or science fiction with this much sympathy. Among the more memorable of last year’s s-f books was A Sense of Reality, a collection of four of Graham Greene’s novelettes, each of which attempted to explore, through the unreal, the nature of “reality.” Two of these I feel were excellent (I should have liked to have included “A Discovery in the Woods” in this volume). Granville Hicks, reviewing the book for the Saturday Review, seemed to like all the stories, but found the main significance in Greene’s love for paradox, which “is the point of the title.” And Kingsley Amis (also in SR) seemed to believe that André Maurois, in “The Earth Dwellers,” was writing a fable designed to convert followers of Fabre away from belief in ant-instinct.

Meantime, the critics and the editors of quality fiction magazines have joyously discovered Slawomir Mrozek, the Polish satirist, whose short sharp fables (and these are fables) generally fall just short of fantasy, but well within the range of speculative or imaginative literature. Perhaps that elusive line between the genres of s-f and mainstream is related to the critics’ enjoyment of the Mrozek fables as specific criticisms of Communism. The fables are barbed and excellent. They are true satires on mankind, with special reference to his political-social organizations. Most of them, with no more than some change in nomenclature and occasionally in minor procedures, could be aimed as pointedly at American customs. But in that case, would Mademoiselle and Playboy enjoy them as much?

I mentioned a story of Graham Greene’s which would have been included here, had it been possible. There are always a few such disappointments in compiling an anthology. It may be due to the growing respectability of the field, or to the increasing number of mainstream entries, or both—but there seem to be more such problems each year. Some of these are due to previous exclusive reprint commitments. Others are budget problems: many anthologies proportion their funds to allow for larger payments to “name” authors) I prefer not to.

These dropouts are, of course, listed in the Honorable Mentions, together with stories that were too long, or for other reasons not quite right for the book. But there are two stories I should like to mention here, if only because both are the work of comparatively new writers of unusual ability. These were Roger Zelazny’s extraordinarily thoughtful and lender “A Rose for Ecclesiastes,” and Rick Raphael’s very funny, very human “Sonny.”

There were two other dropouts not listed at all because I do not feel that my coverage of poetry is wide enough for me to name individual items as “The Best.” I use—or try to use—what I happen to see that I like. This time I was unable to secure rights to some poems from John Updike’s new collection. Telephone Poles, and to excerpts from Harry Martinson’s Aniara (both published by Knopf, 1963).

Fifteen or twenty of the poems in the Updike volume qualify readily as s-f; I liked, in particular, “Cosmic Gall,” “In Praise of (C_l0H_fO_s)V “While Dwarf,” “Comp. Religion,” “Fever,” and the title poem, “Telephone Poles.”

Aniara is the book of poems on which the Swedish space opera (no joke; opera, about space) of the same name is based. The opera was published here in 1962; the poems in 1963.

In addition to these, several individual poems came to my (delighted) attention during the year: John Ciardi’s “A New Fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant,” in McCall’s; May Swenson’s “Models of the Universe,” written on commission for the Steuben Glass Company; Doris Pitkin Buck’s “No Trading Voyage,” in Fantasy and Science Fiction/ Robert Cullen’s “Dolphin,” in Commonweal) “Helpmeet,” by “Sec,” in the Reporter) J. S. Bigelow’s “The Bat and the Scientist,” in the Atlantic Monthly.

I come now to the paragraph where I must thank those people who assisted in the preparation of the anthology. This (like the securing of stories) is increasingly difficult: the number of people who offer suggestions, read stories, or lend clerical help, seems to grow with each book. With apologies, then, to the many who are not mentioned here— my especial gratitude to Carol Emshwiller and Anthony Boucher for their recommendations; to Virginia Blish, Gerard Dorion, and James Walker for reader reactions; to Mary Lou Collard, Marcia Pley, George Roeder, and Ann Pohl, for clerical and other assistance; and above all to Barbara Norville, at Simon and Schuster, for every conceivable kind of help and cooperation.

The following authors participated in the Playboy symposium, the Double Bill survey, and/or the New Worlds guest-editorial series:

The following editors, anthologists, publishers, producers, etc., also participated! John W. Campbell, Jr., E. J. Cornell, Groff Conklin, Basil Davenport, Martin Greenberg, J. F. McComas, P. Schuyler Miller, all In Double Bill; Dr. I. F. Clarke and Roberta Rambelli, in New Worlds.