Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection

Part Two: On Science Fiction Survivors

Martin H. Greenberg and I have co-edited a series of anthologies for Daw Books, which include the best stories of a given year. We began with the best of 1939 (a book that appeared in 1979), and proceeded year by year until in 1986, the fifteenth volume appeared with the best of 1953. In press (as I write this) is volume sixteen which deals with the best of 1954, and in preparation is volume seventeen which deals with the best of 1955.
For each of these books, Marty writes a general introduction outlining the events of the year, both in the real world of science fiction, and in the imaginary world of the great outside. We then each supply a headnote for each of the stories in the volume. Marty's headnotes deal with the science fiction writer's career, while I write on some subject or other that either the author or the story has inspired in my weird brain.
I read Marty's headnotes with avidity for they always tell me more about the writer than I know, but not more than I want to know, of course.
One thing that I've noticed, with some curiosity, is that science fiction writers tend to have a ten-year lifespan, or, if anything, less.
That is, they will write science fiction, sometimes copiously, for ten years or less, and then they will dwindle off and fade to a halt. Sometimes, they don't even dwindle, they simply stop dead. It leaves me wondering why.
One explanation, of course, is that they find other and more lucrative markets. John D. MacDonald wrote science fiction in his early years and then made the big time in mystery thrillers. John Jakes wrote science fiction in his early years and then made the big time in historical fiction.
Another explanation is that they die-even science fiction writers die. Back in the 1950s, Cyril Kornbluth and Henry Kuttner died while each was at the peak of his career, and more recently the same was true for Philip K. Dick and Frank Herbert.
But there are those who simply stop and end what seems a fruitful career without switching to other fields and while remaining vigorously alive. I can even think of names of fresh young writers who graced the pages of this magazine in its early issues whom we (or anyone else) don't hear from much anymore.
Why is that? Do they run out of ideas? Do they simply get tired of writing? Does science fiction change into new channels with which they are out of sympathy?
I simply don't know.
Perhaps this is something that is true of all forms of writing and not of science fiction alone. Perhaps it is true of all forms of creative endeavor. Perhaps "burnout" is a common phenomenon which ought to be studied more than it is-by psychologists, not by me.
But if burnout is common, then what about those cases in which burnout does not occur? It may be just as useful to study those who are burnout-immune, and who have been writing high-quality science fiction steadily, prolifically, and successfully for, say, forty years and more, and who show no signs of breaking under the strain.
Lately, I have noticed that such people are termed "dinosaurs" by some observers in the field. I suspect that the term is used pejoratively; that is, it is not used as a compliment. From the things they have to say about the writers they call dinosaurs, I gather that, like the real dinosaurs, these writers are considered to be ancient, clumsy, and outmoded.
The term, however, is particularly inappropriate because the characteristic that we most associate with the real dinosaurs is that they are extinct, while the characteristic most noticeable about the writing dinosaurs is that they are not extinct. As a matter of fact, I gather from the nature of the comments made about these dinosaurs that those who use the term are rather aggrieved at them for not being extinct and for hogging too much of the spotlight for far too much time.
Well, that's their problem. For myself, I prefer to use the term "survivors," which is neither pejorative nor complimentary, but merely factual.
What are the characteristics that would qualify a science fiction writer to be a survivor?
To begin with, since I talked about a successful and steady and prolific writing life of at least forty years, a survivor would have to be at least sixty years old, and alive, and working. Naturally, he would have had to have started at quite a young age and been swatting away at it steadily since then.
I can think, offhand, of nine writers who fulfill these qualifications, and here they are:
1) Jack Williamson. His first story was published in 1928, when he was twenty years old. He has been writing steadily for fifty-nine years, and he is now eighty years old. To me, he is the undoubted and wellbeloved dean of science fiction. His "The Legion of Space, " which bounced me off the wall when I was a teenager, appeared fifty-three years ago.
2) Clifford D. Simak. His first story was published in 1931, when he was twenty-seven years old. He has been writing steadily for fifty-six years and he is now eighty-two years old. His "City" appeared forty-three years ago, and "Cosmic Engineers" forty-eight years ago.
3) L. Sprague de Camp. His first story was published in 1937, when he was thirty years old. He has been writing steadily for forty-nine years and is now seventy-nine years old. His "Lest Darkness Fall" which I read in preference to studying for an all-important test in physical chemistry (without ever regretting it) appeared forty-eight years ago.
4) Isaac Asimov. (You didn't think I'd leave myself out through some perverted notion of modesty, did you?) My first story was published in March, 1939, when I was nineteen. I have been writing steadily for forty-eight years, and I am now sixty-seven years old. My story "Nightfall" appeared forty-six years ago.
5) Robert Heinlein. His first story was published in August, 1939, when he was thirty-two. He has been writing steadily for forty-eight years and he is now eighty years old. His "Blowups Happen " appeared forty-seven years ago.
6) Fritz Leiber. His first story was published in August, 1939, when he was twenty-nine. He has been writing steadily for forty-eight years and he is now seventy-six years old. His "Conjure Wife" appeared forty-four years ago.
7) Frederik Pohl. It's hard to say because so much of his early stuff appeared under pseudonyms of one sort or another, but an undoubted story of his appeared in 1941 when he was twenty-one. He has been writing steadily for forty-six years, and he is now sixty-seven years old. His "Gravy Planet" ("Space Merchants") appeared thirty-five years ago.
8) Arthur C. Clarke. His first story appeared in 1946, when he was twenty-nine. He has been writing steadily for forty-one years, and he is now seventy years old. His "Rescue Party" appeared forty-one years ago.
9) Poul Anderson. His first story appeared in 1947, when he was twenty-one. He has been writing steadily for forty years, and is now sixty-one years old. His "The Helping Hand" appeared thirty-seven years ago.
I don't pretend that this list is necessarily definitive. Offhand, I can think of three other possible survivors. Lester del Rey's first story was published in 1938, while A. E. Van Vogt and Alfred Bester were each first published in 1939. In recent decades, however, they have not published much, so I can't honestly deny burnout in their cases.
If we look at the list, we can come to some conclusions, I think. In the first place the survivors were all science fiction fans from a very early age, and gained a life-long fascination with the field. That must be so.
Secondly, each must be a nonsuffering writer. Lots of good writers, even great writes, don't necessarily like to write, and must force themselves to do so. This doesn't prevent them from writing well, you understand, but it does prevent them from writing a lot, and my qualification for being a survivor is that one writes steadily and prolifically.
Thirdly, each resists the notion of abandoning science fiction. It is not likely that survivors can write only SF and nothing else. To my knowledge, Simak, Pohl, and Anderson have written good nonfiction; Clarke and de Camp have written quite a bit of good nonfiction; and I have written a thundering lot of it. In addition, Pohl has written mainstream fiction (he has a new novel entitled Chernobyl that's coming out-very unusual and not science fiction). De Camp has written excellent historical novels. As for me, I have written a great deal of mystery fiction. In every case, however, no matter how they stray, these survivors always return to science fiction.
There you are. "Dinosaurs"? I think not. I think the survivors (even I) are the great pillars of science fiction. I wonder how many more of them will appear in the future.
Nowhere!
In 1516, the english scholar Thomas More (1478-1535) published a book (in Latin), with a long title-as was the fashion in those days-that was also in Latin. When it finally appeared in its first English edition in 1551, the title was given as " A fruteful and pleasant Worke of the beste State of a publyque
Weale, and of the newe yle, called Utopia." We refer to the book simply as Utopia.
In the book, More described the workings of what he considered an ideal human society, as found on the island nation of Utopia, one that was governed entirely by the dictates of reason. His description of such a society is so noble and rational that it would seem enviable even today.
More was under no illusions as to the real world, however. The word "utopia" is from the Greek "ou" ("not") and "topos" ("place") so that it means "nowhere." More realized, in other words, that his ideal existed nowhere on Earth (and still doesn't). In fact, his book, in describing his ideal society, served also by clear contrast to excoriate the actual governments of his day, particularly that of his native England which, of course, he knew the best.
An easy mistake was made, however. Since Utopia, as described, was such a wonderful place, it could easily be imagined that the first syllable was from the Greek prefix "eu-" meaning "good" so that Utopia became not "nowhere" but the "good place."
The word "utopia " entered the English language, and the other European languages as well, as meaning an ideal society. The adjective "utopian " refers to any scheme that has what seems a good end in view, but that is not practical, and cannot be carried through in any realistic sense.
We might speak of utopian literature-written accounts in which ideal societies are described, with More's as the classic, but not the earliest, example. Plato's Republic was a description, nineteen centuries earlier than Utopia, of an ideal state dependent upon reason. Earlier still, were accounts of ideal states in mythological or religious literature, in the form of past golden ages or of future messianic ones. The Garden of Eden is a well-known example of the former, and the eleventh chapter of Isaiah of the latter.
The production of utopian accounts has not fallen off since the time of More, either. The most influential recent examples have been Looking Backward, published in 1888 by Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), which described the United States of 2000 under an ideal Socialist government, and Walden Two, published in 1948 by B. F. Skinner (1904-), which described an ideal society based on Skinner's own theories of social engineering.
All such utopias are not convincing, however. Unless one accepts the conventions of religion, it is difficult to believe in golden or messianic ages. Nor can one easily suppose that sweet reason will at any time dominate humanity.
In the course of the nineteenth century, however, something new entered the field of utopianism. The possibility arose that scientific and technological advance might impose a utopia from without, so to speak. In other words, while human beings remained as irrational and imperfect as ever, the advance of science might supply plenty of food, cure disease and mental ailments, track down and abort irrational impulses, and so on. A perfect technology would cancel out an imperfect humanity. The tendency to take this attitude and to paint the future in glowing technological colors reached the point where what we call science fiction is called, in Germany, "utopian stories."
As a matter of fact, however, it isn't at all likely that the average writer is going to try to write a truly utopian story. There's no percentage in it. All you can do is describe such a society and explain, at great length, how good it is, and how well it works, and how it manages not to break down. There can't be any drama in it, no problems, no risks, no threat of catastrophe, no pulling through by the merest squeak.
Clearly, if such things were possible, the utopia would be no utopia. It follows that utopian stories are, by their very nature, dreadfully dull. The one utopian novel I've actually managed to read was Looking Backward, and although it was a best-seller in its times and still has its enthusiasts, I tell you right now that if dullness could kill, reading it would be a death sentence.
So dull are utopian books that they fail to fulfill their function of pointing out the errors and faults of the societies that really exist. You can't grow indignant over these faults if you fall asleep in the process.
There developed, therefore, the habit of attacking societies in a more direct fashion. Instead of describing the good opposite, one described the evil reality, but exaggerated it past bearing. Instead of a society in which everything was ideally good, one described a society in which everything was ideally bad.
The word coined for a totally bad society is "dystopia," where the first syllable is from the Greek prefix "dys-" meaning "abnormal" or "defective." Dystopia is the "bad place." Thus, you can figure out what "dystopian literature" would be.
Dystopias are intrinsically more interesting than utopias. Milton's description of his dystopian Hell in the first two books of Paradise Lost is far more interesting than his description of utopian Hell in the third book. And in The Lord of the Rings, not much can be told about the stay of the Fellowship in the utopian elfland of Lorien, but how the story intensifies and grows more interesting as we approach the dystopian Morder.
But can there be dystopias today with science and technology advancing as they do?
Certainly! You need only view science and technology as contributing to the evil (which is not difficult to do).
And yet pure dystopian tales are as dull and as unbearable as pure utopian ones. Consider the most famous pure dystopian tale of modern times, 1984 by George Orwell (1903-1950), published in 1948 (the same year in which Walden Two was published). I consider it an abominably poor book. It made a big hit (in my opinion) only because it rode the tidal wave of cold war sentiment in the United States.
The pure utopian tale can only hit the single note of "Isn't it wonderful-wonderful-wonderful. " The pure dystopian tale can only hit the single note of "Isn't it awful-awful-awful." And one cannot build a melody on the basis of a single note.
Well, then, what is a science fiction writer supposed to do if both utopian and dystopian stories are dull?
Remember, they are poor only if they are pure, so avoid the extremes. Milton's Hell was made interesting because of his portrait of Satan, courageous even in the ultimate adversity, feeling pangs of remorse even when immersed in ultimate evil. Milton's Heaven was without interest because there was no way of introducing danger in the face of an omnipotent, omniscient God. His dystopia was not pure, his utopia was.
The evil of Mordor was made bearable by the courage and humanity of Frodo and the story would have remained interesting and successful even if Frodo had failed in the end. It was his courage and humanity, not his victory, that really counted.
The essence of a story is the struggle of one thing against another: a living thing against the impersonal universe; a living thing against another living thing; one aspect of a living thing against another aspect of himself.
In each case, you have to make it possible for the reader to identify with at least one side of the struggle, so that his interest and sympathy is engaged. I say "at least" one side, because if you are skillful, you can cause him to identify with both sides and be emotionally torn.
The side or sides with whom you identify must carryon the struggle with courage, intelligence, and decency-or, at least, learn to do so. The story won't be effective if you are ashamed of the side you make your own.
Both sides must have a fair chance to win. It is tempting to pile the odds up against your side, so as to make your hero's ultimate victory the more unexpected, exciting, and triumphant, but in that case you must be sure that your side does end up victorious. You can't make it David versus Goliath unless David wins, and as one becomes more and more experienced and sophisticated in reading, that may come to seem too obvious and even too unrealistic.
It seems to me, then, that the best one can do is to present one's story as a struggle between sides which are both mixtures of good and evil (thus placing it somewhere between the extremes of utopia and dystopia), and don't make the odds overwhelming in either direction. One can then proceed to make one's point without being forced into a happy ending and under conditions of maximum excitement and reader uncertainty. The reader will not only be uncertain as to how his side will win, but if it will win, or even, perhaps, which is truly his side.
I don't say this is easy, of course.
Outsiders, Insiders
I am a great booster of "the brotherhood of science fiction." I wrote an editorial on the subject, with just that title, in the fifth issue of IAsfm (January-February, 1978). I delight in thinking of us ardent writers and readers of science fiction as a band of brothers (and sisters, of course) fond of each other, and supporting each other.
Unfortunately, there are aspects of such a situation that are not entirely delightful. Let's consider these unfavorable aspects, because if the field of science fiction is to remain as ideal as we all want it to be, we have to see the dangers. We may not be able to defeat those dangers even if we see them, but we certainly can't, if we don't see them.
For instance, if we are truly a small and intimate band (as I remember us being in the Golden Age of Campbell, though perhaps that may only be the consequence of nostalgia) then there is a danger that we might close our ranks, unfairly and petty-mindedly, against outsiders.
I remember, for instance, when Michael Crichton wrote The Andromeda Strain and it hit the best- seller lists. In those days, it had not yet become common for science fiction and fantasy to be actual best-sellers, and here was an "outsider" who had accomplished it. What made him an outsider? Well, he hadn't sold to the magazines. He didn't show up at conventions. He wasn't one of us.
There followed reviews in various science fiction prozines and fanzines and it seemed to me, at the time, that they were uniformly unfavorable. I can't judge how justified those reviews might have been for I never read the book (perhaps because I, too, felt he was an outsider) but there did appear, in my opinion, an extra helping of venom beyond what I usually notice in unfavorable reviews.
Was that fair? No, it wasn't. Crichton, a person of great talent, went on to be very successful, both in his later books (some of them not science fiction) and in movies as well. Our objections to him did not hurt him and he doesn't need us. In retrospect, we might conclude that some of us were petty.
Nor am I trying to preach from some high moral position, implying that I am myself above such things. Not at all.
I went through a period soon after World War II, in which I reacted badly (though entirely within myself), and I look back on that period in shame.
When one is part of a small and comparatively insignificant clique, warming one's self in its closeness and camaraderie, what happens if one of the clique suddenly rises and becomes famous in the wild world outside?
Thus, in the 1940s, Robert Heinlein was quickly accepted as the best science fiction writer of us all (and in the opinion of many, he still is the grand master) and I accepted that, too. I was not envious, for I was just a beginner and I knew that many writers were better than I was. Besides, I liked Bob's writing a great deal. And most of all, he was one of us, writing for the same magazines, going to the same conventions, corresponding with us, first-naming me and expecting me to first-name him, and so on.
But then, soon after World War 11, Bob Heinlein was involved with a motion picture, Destination: Moon. It wasn't a very good motion picture; it didn't make the hit that the later 2001: A Space Odyssey or Star Wars did. But it was the first motion picture involving one of us, and while I said not a word, I was secretly unhappy. Bob had left our group and become famous in the land of the infidels.
To make it worse, he had published "The Green Hills of Earth " in The Saturday Evening Post and it had created a stir. It was a real science fiction story and it was in the slicks; not only in the slicks, but in the greatest and slickest slick of them all. We all dreamed of publishing in the SEP (I, also) but that was like dreaming of taking out Marilyn Monroe on a date. You knew it was just a dream and you had no intention of
even trying to make it come true. And now Bob had done it. He hadn't just tried, he had done it.
I don't know whether I simply mourned his loss, because I thought that now he would never come back to us; or whether I was simply and greenly envious. All I knew was that I felt more and more uncomfortable. It was like having a stomachache in the mind, and it seemed to spoil all my fun in being a science fiction writer.
So I argued it out with myself-not because I am a noble person but because I hated feeling the way I did, and I wanted to feel better. I said to myself that Bob had blazed new trails, and that it didn't matter who did it, as long as it was done. Those new trails had been opened not for Robert Heinlein, but for science fiction, and all of us who were in the business of writing or reading science fiction could be grateful and thankful for we would sooner or later experience the benefit of Bob's pioneering.
And that was true. Because Bob made science fiction look good to people who did not ordinarily read science fiction, and who despised it when they thought of it at all, it became more possible for the rest of us to have our stuff published outside the genre magazines-even in the SEP. (I had a two-part serial published in that magazine myself eventually, but that was when it was long past its great days.)
The result of my working this out meant I was free of sickness on later occasions. When my first book, Pebble in the Sky, appeared under the Doubleday imprint, it was followed in a matter of months by The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I don't have to tell you that Ray's book far outshone mine. It didn't bother me, for it seemed to me that the better Ray's book did, the more people would read science fiction in book form, and some of them would be sure to look for more of the same and stumble over mine.
And they did. Pebble is still earning money, thirty-six years later.
And however annoying it might be that Michael Crichton could enter our field straight out of medical school, move right up to the novel level, and land on the best-seller list, and have everyone drooling over him, where's the harm? He did it (unintentionally, perhaps) for us. He added to the respectability of science fiction among those who found us unrespectable, and made it easier for the rest of us to get on the best-seller list occasionally.
Far from snarling, we should have been cheering.
Another point. A band of brothers (and sisters) is at its best when there is nothing much to compete for. As long as we were all getting no more than one and two cents a word (as we did in that wonderful Golden Age of Campbell) with no chance at book publication, foreign sales and movies; as long as the only kudos we could get was first place in the " Analytical Laboratory" which meant a half-cent-a-word bonus; as long as no one outside our small field had ever heard of any of us under any circumstances--what was there to compete over? The most successful of us were almost as permanently impecunious as the least so there was no reason to snarl and bite.
Now, however, times have changed. There are many more of us, and some of us write best-sellers.
In fact, the greatest best-seller of the 1980s, Stephen King, is, after a fashion, one of us. It's no longer a few thousand bucks that's at stake; it's a few million. And that brother bit fades, bends, and crumples under the strain.
I don't write reviews, but I do read them, and I'm beginning to see the venom again as one writer discusses the work of another member of the brotherhood. What's more, the annual award of the Nebulas, which are determined by vote among the members of the Science Fiction Writers of America, seems to rouse hard feeling and contentiousness every year. The stakes are simply too high.
Thus, a young member of the brotherhood (to me he seemed a child) complained to me the other day that the "young writers" (young to him) were ferocious in their competitiveness. There was none of the friendliness, he said, that there was in our day (meaning his and mine, though I was a published writer when he was born).
I suppose he's right, though.
In a way, I can't ache to return to the good old days when we were all impoverished together. It seems a glamorous time in my mind now, but I remember Sophie Tucker's immortal dictum: "I've tried poor, and I've tried rich, and rich is better."
But is there a price we must pay for it? Must the camaraderie be gone? Must the friendly back-and-forth be over?
Why not remember that science fiction is still a relatively specialized field; that SF writers have to know a great deal more, and develop more unusual skill, than ordinary writers; that SF readers, too, demand more because they need more? Can we remember that we're all in this together? That those in front pave the way for those behind? That at any time someone can appear from the strange land of outside, or the stranger land of youth, and carve out new territory for all of us, and that they should be welcomed gladly?
Let's be friends. There are endless worlds of the mind and emotions to conquer, and we can advance more surely, if we support-not fight-each other.