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Studies In The Contemporary American And British Science Fiction Novel
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Studies In The Contemporary American And British Science Fiction Novel
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This dissertation has been
microfilmed exactly as received 69-8678
SAMUELSON, David N orm an, 1939-
STUDIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN AND
BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL.
U n iv ersity of Southern C alifornia, Ph.D ., 1969
Language and L ite ra tu re , m odern
University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan
^ Copyright by
David Norman Samuelson
1969
STUDIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN AND
BRITISH SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
by-
David Norman Samuelson
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Comparative Literature)
January 1969
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
T H E G RA D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV ER SITY PARK
LO S A N G E L E S , C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
David Norman Samuelson
under the direction of Dissertation C om
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Gradu
ate School, tn partial fulfillment of require
ments for the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
V'can
Chairman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ..... ........................ 1
Chapter
I. HISTORICAL REVIEW ....................... 4
II. THEORETICAL OVERVIEW ..................... 45
III. ARTHUR C. CLARKE; CHILDHOOD'S END.... 84
IV. ISAAC ASIMOV: THE CAVES OF STEEL... 120
V. THEODORE STURGEON: MORE THAN HUMAN (1953) . 163
VI. WALTER M. MILLER, JR.: A CANTICLE FOR
LEIBOWITZ (1959) ...................... 221
VII. ALGIS BUDRYS: ROGUE MOON (1960) ......... 280
VIII. J. G. BALLARD: THE CRYSTAL WORLD (1966) . . 329
CONCLUSION.................................... 370
BIBLIOGRAPHIES............................... 393
A. Primary Works................ 395
B. Secondary Works . . ...................... 413
ii
INTRODUCTION
This study is primarily an attempt to place and
evaluate six novels representative of American and British
science fiction in the period following World War II. To
understand the goals and achievements of these works,
however, the reader must have some idea of what science
fiction is and how it relates to other kinds of literature.
The term "science fiction" is rather nebulous and the
concepts for which it stands are somewhat controversial.
Even the definition of the term is fairly elaborate, and
the reader, in order to have a clear grasp of this defini
tion, requires considerable background. Therefore, these
six readings are preceded by two chapters of a more general
nature.
Chapter I discusses how science fiction emerged
from its historical antecedents, how it developed as a
specialized category of popular literature, and how it has
progressed, more or less in isolation, to a point where it
appears ready to return to the main stream of literature.
Chapter II explores chiefly the ways in which
science fiction differs from its historical antecedents and
from other literature contemporary with it. The difference
2
is seen to be due largely to the fusing together of
science, fantasy, and the conventions of popular literature,
into a kind of science fictional cosmology. As a defini
tion emerges from these considerations, it can be seen that,
there is much in science fiction which alienates many
potential readers, which may blind them to individual
achievements in the genre, and which has set up obstacles
to their acceptance of its bid to rejoin the main stream.
With this information in hand, the reader can then
follow the argument of the succeeding chapters, III through
VIII, not only as it relates to a novel's literary worth,
but also as it relates to the novelist's achievement in the
genre, the conventions of which he has accepted. For each
book, the relation of the book to the author's other works
is taken into account, as is the relation between his use
of certain themes and techniques and the use made of them
by other writers. The primary purpose of each examination,
however, is an analysis and evaluation of one particular
novel, a close reading which involves matters of form,
style, imagery, symbolism, theme, and philosophical content
as they relate to the success of this particular book, not
merely to its representative quality.
Following these readings, Chapter IX then offers
some general inferences regarding the similarities and
dissimilarities found in these novels, along with some
3
comments concerning their relative failure and success as
science fiction and as literature, concluding with some
brief remarks on the future of science fiction and of
science fiction studies.
CHAPTER I
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
As an historical category, science fiction is
generally taken to mean one of two things, a body of liter
ature reflecting the impact of "science" on man, dating
back to the earliest examples of story-telling, or a
commercial publishing category aimed at a specialized
audience, dating back to the founding of the first American
science fiction magazine in 1926.
Students of literature seem to emphasize the conti
nuity of the present with the past in science fiction.
Marjorie Nicholson and Roger Lancelyn Green, for example,
have written about the persistent motif of the voyage into
space, beginning their studies with Lucian and ending with
C. S. Lewis.'*' Numerous books have been written on the
history of the utopia, from Plato to the present day,
sometimes stressing the increasingly important role of
science in making these dreams and/or nightmares not only
^Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Voyages to the Moon
(New York, 1948); Roger Lancelyn Green, Into Other Worlds:
Space-Flight in Fiction, from Lucian to Lewis (London,
T f e s r : — ----------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4
5
2
more realistic as literature but also possible in reality.
Historians of the Gothic novel, of the supernatural and the
marvelous in literature, and of the relations between
science and literature have also contributed to our knowl-
3
edge of science fiction before the twentieth century. Few
of these books were written from the standpoint of science
fiction, of course, and in most of them the sense of conti
nuity does not extend to the commercial specialty first
called "science fiction" in the 1930s.
Studies oriented more towards modern science fiction
also tend to cite historical antecedents. J. 0. Bailey
begins the historical first half of his pioneering study
with a consideration of "scientific fiction before 1817,"
his earliest reference being to More's Utopia (1515-6).^
Sam Moskowitz, a long-time "fan" and amateur scholar of
science fiction, cites Plato and even Homer as significant
2
See especially Nell Eurich, Science in Utopia:
A Mighty Design (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967); Richard
Gerber, Utopian Fantasy (London, 1955); Raymond Ruyer,
L'Utopie et les utopies (Paris, 1955).
3
For an example of each, see: Montague Summers,
The Gothic Quest: A History of the Gothic Novel (London,
[.1938]); Dorothy Scarborough, The Supernatural in Modern
English Fiction (New York and London, 1917); HLubertJ
Matthey, Essaf~sur le merveilleux danx la litterature
francaise depuis 1800 (diss. Lausanne, 1915); RobertFath,
L1Influence de la science sur la litterature francaise dans
la seconde moitie 19° siecle (diss. Lausanne, 1901).
4
J. 0. Bailey, Pilgrims through Space and Time:
Trends and Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction
(New York, 1947).
6
ancestors, although he begins his study proper with Cyrano
5
de Bergerac. The surveys by Kingsley Amis and the British
astronomer Patrick A. Moore also give some cursory atten
tion to the venerable ancestry of science fiction, more or
less as a way of establishing its credentials.^ One study,
by the German scholar Martin Schwonke, rather thoroughly
documents the continuity of utopian elements from Plato to
the 1950s, including magazine science fiction,in its
consideration of twentieth century literature.^ Thomas
Dean Clareson, now editor of the newsletter of the Confer
ence on Science Fiction of the Modern Language Association,
stresses in his study of American science fiction at the
turn of this century the continuity of fantasy, and within
fantasy of "extrapolation," a term in popular use within
the science fiction community:
Extrapolation from the known and accepted ... is
the basic method of science fiction. Tt is not of
recent innovation. For as each field of science has
developed and provided material provocative to the
5
Sam Moskowitz, Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers
of Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1963).
Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell: A Survey of
Science Fiction (London, 1961); Patrick A. Moore, Science
and Fiction (London, 1957).
^Martin Schwonke, Vom Staatsroman zur Science
Fiction, in Gottinger Abhandlungen zur Soziologie, 2 '
(Stuttgart, 1957). Ruyer (above, note 2) also comments on
the similarity and continuity between science fiction and
utopia, but Schwonke's thesis is disputed by Hans-Jurgen
Krysmanski, Die utopische Methode, in Dortmunder Schriften
zur Sozialforschung, 2l (Koln and Opladen, 1963), pp. 89-
T T .
imagination, writers have used that material in
their stories. . . .
If there is to be a logical pattern to the
definition of science fiction so that its emergence
and development can be studied, the basic premise
must be that the genre may exist in any historical
period if the stories to be so named use as a point
of departure a fact or theory accepted as scientif
ically true, or possible, at the time of the story's
composition.8
Given such a basic premise, one could so modify the meaning
of science as to make myths and folktales of ancient and
primitive peoples into examples of science fiction, illus
trating man's recognition of nature and his first "fictions"
of order and system, as Anton Lampa suggested back in
1919.^ But Clareson, despite the implications in his defi
nition, maintains that science fiction really got its start
in the nineteenth century when, as others have indicated,
science and technology began to play a larger role in
Gothic and utopian fantasies and imaginary voyages.
"Science" has perhaps never been wholly absent from
the conception of utopia. Will Durant suggests that Plato
was dabbling with eugenics and psychoanalysis as well as
political science in the Republic, and the Greek philosopher
was obviously interested in showing the effect on man of a
O
Thomas Dean Clareson, "The Emergence of American
Science Fiction: 1880-1915," unpubl. diss. (Pennsylvania,
1956), pp. 12-13.
9
Anton Lampa, Das naturwissenschaftliche Marchen
(Reichenburg, 1919).
"scientifically" organized society.^ The Renaissance
utopias of More and Bacon, Andrae and Campanella all
describe technological innovations not yet a part of their
authors' societies, in addition to fictionalizing an ideal
state.^ And it was in the eighteenth century that the
first anti-utopia, satirizing science (Swift's "Voyage to
Laputa," in Gulliver's Travels, 1726), and the first utopia
set in the future (Sebastian Mercier's L'An 2440, 1770)
appeared. But by the last half of the nineteenth century,
utopia was generally located in the future, to be brought
about by scientific thinking and with full utilization of
technological devices. And the possibility of man's being
dominated by the machine and by scientific order was
already seen as probable and frightening enough to provoke
other authors into writing anti-scientific utopias and
satires: Samuel Butler's Erewhon appeared in 1872, W. H.
Hudson's A Crystal Age in 1887, and William Morris' News
from Nowhere in 1890, and a large number of utopian and
anti-utopian novels seem to have been inspired by the need
to support or rebut Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward,
published in 1888.^
10
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York,
1953), pp. 15-39.
"^Bailey, pp. 24-26. Original works cited, unless
citation is quite specific, will be found below in
Bibliography A: Primary Works.
12
Vernon Louis Parrington, Jr., American Dreams:
A Study of American Utopias, 2nd ed. (New York, 1964),
9
The Gothic novel might never have achieved its
popularity around the turn of the nineteenth century if it
had not been that reason and science had so exercised the
belief in ghosts and other bogeymen from the minds of
cultured Europeans that a tale of horror and the super-
natural could entertain and titillate a large audience.
But there are also more direct connections than that
between the Gothic tradition and science fiction. Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein (1817) is one of the last and best
of the Gothic novels and it is also an early example of
science fiction, a fable warning against the scientist's
temptation to play God. Goethe's Faust (1808, 1832)
inverts the moral of Frankenstein and of the original Faust
story by awarding a place in Heaven to his hero who seems
to stand for the questing spirit of science and modern man.
Faust's "science," however, is largely the alchemy, magic,
and spiritualism of the Middle Ages which played an impor
tant role in Gothic fiction. Medievalist trappings and an
atmosphere of subdued horror, both creditable to the
influence of the Gothic novel, sometimes outweigh the
rationality associated with science in early American
science fiction, such as Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland
pp. 77 ff. See also Sylvia E. Bowman et al., Edward
Bellamy Abroad: An American Prophet's Influence (New York,
TW2.J. ------------ -----------------
10
13
and occasional fantasies of Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville.
The same is true in later novels on the borderline between
science fiction and fantasy, such as Villiers de l'lsle-
Adam's story of a female automaton, L'Eve future (1886);
Gustave Meyrink's revival of the medieval legend of an
artificial man, Per Golem (1915); The Created Legend (1906-
13) , a trilogy by the Russian novelist Sologub which begins
in an atmosphere of terror and magic, continues through
various occult experiences, and concludes with a departure
from the earth by spaceship; and the science fiction tales
of the American Gothicist, H. P. Lovecraft, in the 1920s.
Science and the scientific attitude also found their
way into contemporary fiction in the nineteenth century.
Balzac, George Eliot Flaubert, Turgenev, and Zola all at
some point describe with admiration a medical doctor as the
epitome of the scientist, not as the bumbling fool so much
previous literature, probably copying from life, had made
physicians out to be.^ Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote three
novels he called "medicated," which were dedicated to
replacing superstition with science in the consideration of
13
For examples and commentary, but no thorough
study, see H. Bruce Franklin, Future Perfect: American
Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York, I3’ 66) .
■^For a general discussion of science in nineteenth
century fiction, see Philo M. Buck, The World's Great Age
(New York, 1936), and Leo J. Henlcin, Darwinism in the
English Novel 1860-1910 (New York, 1940).
11
15
mental aberrations. Zola, especially, but other Natural
ists as well, attempted to adopt the "experimental method"
for the novel, showing in fiction what a certain combination
of causes will produce in life."^
A seminal figure in nineteenth century science
fiction is Edgar Allan Poe. His adaptation of the ratioci-
native method of solving crimes in fiction, as in "The
Mystery of Marie Roget," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue,"
and "The Purloined Letter," has influenced science fiction’s
handling of problem-solving, partly through its effect on
17
the modern detective story. His practice and its actual
and supposed correspondence with his theory of composition
attracted the attention of the Brothers Goncourt, whose
reaction in 1856 was almost prophetic in terms of modern
science fiction:
Reading Edgar Allan Poe is a revelation of something
that criticism does not seem to suspect the existence
of. Poe, a new literature, the literature of the
twentieth century; the scientific miracle, the
creation of fable by a+b; a literature at once
^Miriam R. Small, "Afterword" to the Signet
Classic edition of Elsie Venner (New York, 1961), pp. 359-
366.
1 fs
Emile Zola, The Experimental Novel and Other
Essays, trans. Belle M. Sherman (New York, 1893).
■^Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The Life
and Times of the Detective Story (New York and London,
1941), pp. 6-27; Regis Messac, Le "Detective Novel" et
1*influence de la pensee scientifique, Biblioth&que de la
Revue de Litterature Comparee, 59 (Paris, 1929), passim;
Al ima 1 E|lizabethj Murch, The Development of the Detective
Novel (New York, 1958), pp. 67-83.
12
monomaniacal and mathematical. Imagination the
product of analysis; Zadig become an examining magis
trate; Cyrano de Bergerac become a pupil of the
astronomer, Arago. Things here play a greater part
than beings. And love, love which Balzac had already
reduced to second place after money--love makes way
for other sources of interest. In a word, the novel
of the future, bound to concern itself more with the
story of what happens in the brain of humanity than
in its h e a r t .18
The French scholar Hubert Matthey has credited Poe with the
invention not only of the deductive mystery, but also of
the "roman merveilleux-scientifique," seeing as his primary
contribution his artistic formula, his domestication of the
improbable by means of "cohesion" and "logic," as in "The
Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," "A Tale of the Ragged
19
Mountains," and "Descent into the Maelstrom." Poe also
revived the old convention of the marvelous journey, and
buttressed it with contemporary "scientific" theory in The
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), a book which caught
the eye of Jules Verne at the beginning of his career in
20
literature. Verne eventually wrote a sequel to the
unfinished Pym, Le Sphinx des Glaces (1895), but he had
long since turned the voyage extraordinaire into a science
18
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, The Goneourt
Journals 1851-1870, ed. and trans. Lewis Galanti&re (Garden
City, 1958), p. 35.
■^Matthey (above, note 3), pp. 236 ff.
20
I. 0. Evans, "Introduction," The Sphinx of the
Ice-Fields, trans. unknown, in Edgar Allan Poe and Jules
Verne, The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym, ed. Basil Ashmore
(London, 1964), pp. 81-83.
13
fiction formula, filling his narratives with scientific,
quasi-scientific, and pseudo-scientific data and descrip
tions of the moon, under the sea, the center of the earth,
and other places to which he took his adventurous heroes
and readers.
Besides popularizing the scientist-adventurer and
taking his readers off to unexplored locales, Verne also
discovered, or was discovered by, a somewhat specialized
audience who would buy every book he wrote. He summed up,
not only for children, but also for adults in the nine
teenth century, the romance of science and technology, as
21
Kenneth Allott has shown. And it may be, as Mark Hillegas
suggests, that Verne's "greatest contribution was to estab
lish in the public consciousness science fiction as a
22
distinct mode of writing." Others were not slow to
attempt to reach those same readers. Jean-Jacques Bridenne
counts at least eighteen French novelists, from the last
quarter of the nineteenth century through the first quarter
of the twentieth, as pupils, disciples, or imitators of
23
Verne. In the United States, a number of dime novels,
individually and in series, began propagandizing for new
^Kenneth Allott, Jules Verne (London, 1940).
22
Mark R. Hillegas, The Future as Nightmare; H. G.
Wells and the Anti-Utopians (New York, 1967), p. ll.
r % o
z Jean-Jacques Bridenne, La Litterature francaise
d1 imagination scientifique (Dassonville, 1951), pp. 138 ff.
14
kinds of adventure set in motion by marvelous discoveries
o /
and machines. Popular magazines, too, in America and
England around the turn of the century, were already featur
ing as a fairly common commodity stories recognizable as
25
science fiction, including the early works of H. G. Wells.
Wells had some of the ideal characteristics for a
writer of science fiction: a strong presentiment of the
vastness of space and time, a prolific imagination attuned
to the future and to the possibilities of science and tech
nology, a background in literature as well as in science, a
genuine feeling for style and narrative construction. But
he also had a need to be regarded as a significant social
prophet (a need fulfilled in the first quarter of the
twentieth century), which resulted in his turning from
imaginative fiction to essays thinly disguised as fiction
2 6
and books of a clearly expository nature. Although he
may never have been an optimist regarding the future of
mankind, the popularity of his apparent optimism and easy
acceptance of the machine, as Mark Hillegas has shown, seems
to have been partly responsible for the pessimistic anti
utopias of this century (which, compounding the irony, have
9 /
Moskowitz, Explorers (above, note 5), pp. 106-127.
25
Sam Moskowitz, "Introduction: A History of
Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911,"
Science Fiction by Gaslight (Cleveland and New York, 1968),
pp. 15-50.
2 f i
W. Warren Wagar, H. G. Wells and the World State
(New Haven, 1961), passim.
15
27
attacked Wells with his own images and forms). The total
impact of Wells on Western civilization, and on the reaction
of the intellectual community against utopia, as against
science and technology in general, has yet to be measured,
but his influence was considerable on the future development
of what is now known as science fiction. As Hillegas notes
in passing, and Moskowitz in more detail, Wells supplied
writers in the pulp magazines of the Twenties and after
28
with a large reservoir of ideas and themes. But he also
contributed, however indirectly and unintentionally, to the
intellectual disrepute of those same ideas and themes which
resulted in their being restricted primarily to that same
literary "ghetto" for over thirty years.
Writers as capable as Verne (if not equal to Wells)
had written "scientific romances," "utopian novels," and
"cosmic fantasies" in the decades preceding World War I:
Kurd Lasswitz, Paul Scheerbart, and Bernhard Kellermann in
Germany; J. H. Rosny aine in France; Mark Twain, Jack
London, and Edward Bellamy in the United States; Arthur
Conan Doyle in England; Fyodor Sologub and Valeriy Briussov
in Russia. After the war, however, literary men, if they
concerned themselves at all with the future and with
Wellsian projections, tended to be quite dogmatically anti-
utopian and anti-scientific. Zamiatin's We, Hurley's Brave
^Hillegas, passim.
O Q
Hillegas, p. 12; Moskowitz, Explorers, pp. 128-141.
16
New World, and Orwell's 1984 are the most famous examples
of this tendency, but essentially anti-utopian and/or anti-
scientific romances were also written during the first half
of the twentieth century by such authors as E. M. Forster
(as early as 1909), C. S. Lewis, Evelyn Waugh, Percy
Wyndham Lewis, Robert Graves, Andre Maurois, Franz Werfel,
Alexander Doblin, Ernst Jiinger, Alexey Tolstoi, Mikhail
Bulgakov, and Karel £apek.
Although Bernard Shaw published Back to Methusaleh
in 1921 and the fictionalized essays in projection of
W. Olaf Stapledon, as significant a source for pulp writers
as Wells's books, appeared in the Thirties and Forties,
fictional speculation on science and the future was gener-
29
ally limited to the realm of popular literature. In
Germany, for example, a number of "utopisch-phantastische"
novels were written before World War II, generally for a
specialized audience, some of which (preceding the Nazi
era) were even reprinted in the early American science
30
fiction magazines. After Hitler gained power, such
29
For information on Stapledon, see Explorers, pp.
261-277; in addition, Gerber (above, note 2) treats
Stapledon, Shaw, and Wells as major figures in modern
"utopian fantasy."
30
Hans Dominik, Otto Willi Gail, Otfried von
Hanstein, Thea von Harbou, and Kurt Siodmak are among the
writers of this period listed in an error-filled German
bibliography, Heinz Bingenheimer, Transgalaxis Katalog der
deutschsprachigen-utopisch-phantastischen Literatur 1?60-
1960 (Friedricnsdorf, 1960).
17
fiction was apparently tailored to meet the government's
propaganda needs, as it apparently was also in the Soviet
31
Union during the Thirties and Forties. The predominant
field of activity, however, was the United States,
especially after 1926, when Hugo Gernsback founded the first
pulp magazine specializing in what he called "scientific-
32
tion." Gernsback's venture had a good deal of competi
tion: Argosy, All-Story, Weird Tales, and Gernsback's own
Science and Invention were also publishing stories adver
tised as "different" or "impossible," and tales of "pseudo
science" or "super-science." In addition, the new Amazing
Stories does not seem to have been inundated with original
manuscripts, since the first issues consisted largely of
33
reprints from the works of Verne and Wells. The demand
became great enough, however, that other specialized
magazines soon followed, and the field became stable enough
for one generic term to win precedence ("scientific fiction"
33
According to conversations with Siegfried Raguse,
fan and bibliophile, in West Berlin (March-May, 1955), East
German science fiction is following a similar pattern today.
See also Peter Yershov, Science Fiction and Utopian Fantasy
in Soviet Literature (New York, 1954). A general discussion
of some German science fiction can be found in Fred S.
Topik, "Utopische Gedanken in modernen deutschen Romanen
1930 bis 1951," unpubl. diss. (Southern California, 1956).
^ Explorers, pp. 225-242.
33
In addition, Gernsback's later science fiction
magazines also carried, by choice or necessity, stories and
novels by Gail, von Hanstein (above, note 30), and other
German authors. See Donald Byrne Day, Index to the Science
Fiction Magazines 1926-1950 (Portland, Oregon, 1952).
18
o /
yielded to "science fiction" in the Thirties). Most of
these magazines (one hundred seventy-one titles, up to
1961) were quite short-lived, but two are still published
today. Amazing Stories has survived a number of name
changes and lapses in publication, and now appears
bi-monthly. Astounding Stories (now Analog Science Fiction-
Science Fact) has not missed a month since October, 1933
35
(having begun in January, 1930).
The longevity of these two periodicals and the
proliferation of others are an indication, not of a large,
popular following for science fiction in this country, but
of a relatively small readership, more or less homogeneous
in taste, and somewhat dedicated, or even addicted, to this
shared interest. Since the Twenties, at least, these
readers have tended to congregate, identifying themselves
as science fiction "fans," and to correspond with their
favorite writers and magazine editors, keeping the latter
3 6
informed of their customers' reactions. The genuine
^ Explorers, pp. 313-333.
35
Sources for publishing data include: Day Index;
Erwin S. Strauss, The MIT Science Fiction Society's Index to
the S-F Magazines, 1951-1965 (Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1966); annual supplements (T966? 1967) to the MIT Index,
published by the New England Science Fiction Association
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, 1968); Bradford M. Day,
The Complete Checklist of Science-Fiction Magazines
(Woodhaven, New York, 1961); and personal collections.
Sam Moskowitz, The Immortal Storm: A History of
Science Fiction Fandom (Atlanta, 1954); see also Robert
Bloch, The Eighth Stage of Fandom: Selections from 25
Years of fran Writing, ed. Earl Kemp (Chicago, 196^).
19
science fiction fans, the dedicated readers and collectors,
who write letters to the editor, join fan clubs, hold and
attend conventions, compose and publish their own amateur
journals ("fanzines"), and even become professional science
fiction writers, editors, critics, and publishers are a
relatively small group. Yet it is largely these fans who
supported the science fiction enterprise through the
Thirties and Forties, who made American science fiction
into a tight-knit community or literary "movement," and
who, by their votes for annual awards (named "Hugo," in
honor of Gernsback), still exert some influence over the
magazines and paperbacks which are at the center of science
37
fiction even now. And it is at least partly through
their missionary activities that fan clubs and fanzines
have been started in other countries, that American-type
science fiction is published in several languages, and that
the term "science fiction" has been adopted outside of
38
English-speaking countries. American provincialism may
^7
~ A very brief sketch of the history of the "Hugo"
is given in The Hugo Winners, ed. Isaac Asimov (New York,
1962). The book's appendix lists the winners in all cate
gories from 1953 through 1961. Subsequent winners are
identified yearly by P. Schuyler Miller in his book review
column in Analog (January, 1963; December, 1963; January,
1965; February, 1966; January, 1967; March, 1968). Proceed
ings of the World Science Fiction Conventions of 1962
(Chicago) and 1963 (Washington) are available from Advent:
Publishers, a science fiction publishing house in Chicago.
^Explorers, p. 331; correspondence with Pierre
Versins (fan and bibliophile, Lausanne) and Jurgen vom
Scheidt (fan, critic, and author, Munchen) 1963-1965; con
versations with Siegfried Raguse (above, note 31) and with
20
be held partially responsible for the fact that the annual
World Science Fiction Convention has only twice been held
outside of the United States (both times in England, where
readers were attracted early to American science fiction,
probably due to linguistic ties and their own utopian tradi-
39
tion). But the main reason would seem to be American
predominance in "fandom" as well as in the writing of
science fiction.
It is the literature of this American-based "move
ment" which I wish to focus on, largely because it is here
that the lines of development are most obvious, that the
concept of "pure" science fiction has been developed and
to some extent maintained, and that the struggles between
"science" and "literature," can be seen most clearly.
The earliest days of American science fiction have
been documented to some extent by H. Bruce Franklin, Thomas
Forrest J. Ackermann (writer, editor, publisher, agent,
promoter and "professional" fan, Los Angeles) 1963-1966.
Use of the term "science fiction" has been noted in
Schwonke and Krysmanski (above, note 7); see also Hubertus
Schulte Herbriiggen, Utopie und Anti-Utopie; Von der Struk-
turanalyse zur Strukturtypologie, in Bextrage zur Englischen
Philologie, 43 (Bochum-Langendreer, I960), p. 10; Pierre de
Boisdeffre, Une Histoire vivante de la litterature
d1aujourd1hui (1938-1958) (Paris, 1958), pp. 437-442; and
Jacques Bergier, "La science-fiction," Histoire des Littera-
tures, ed. Raymond Queneau, in Encyclopedie de la Pleiade"
III ("Paris, 1958). "Fiction scientifique" is used for Ray
Bradbury and others in R.-M. Alberes, Histoire du roman
moderne (Paris, 1962), pp. 397-402.
39
There has been talk, however, for several years,
about holding the convention in Germany, and Heidelberg
seems likely for 1970, according to Frederick Pohl's
editorial, IF (December, 1968), p. 4.
21
Dean Clareson, J. 0. Bailey, and Sam Moskowitz.Only the
latter two extended their studies into the period dominated
by the magazines, but that period also has been summarized
briefly in a number of short articles and books. In
general, there seems to be agreement that magazine science
fiction has seen three relatively distinct stages, variously
named but more or less coincident with the emphases and
prejudices of three important editors, Gernsback, John W.
Campbell, Jr., and "Anthony Boucher" (William Anthony Parker
White).
The first period, sometimes known as the era of
"physical" science fiction, was in part a continuation of
the turn-of-the-century emphasis on tales of terror and
episodic "he-man" adventure. Edgar Rice Burroughs' first
adventure of John Carter on Mars appeared in 1912, shortly
before the arrival of Tarzan. The exotic fantasies of
H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt, blending Gothic horror and
sometimes scientific theory, were first published in 1917.^
But under the influence of Gernsback, first at Modern
Electrics (where his own novel, Ralph 124C 41+, appeared
40
All cited above: Franklin, note 13; Clareson,
note 8; Bailey, note 4; Moskowitz, note 5.
^Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of
Modern Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966) .
^ Explorers, pp. 172-188.
^ Explorers, pp. 189-207, 243-260.
22
serially in 1911), then at Amazing, later at a number of
other magazines of popular science and "scientifiction,"
more emphasis came to be placed on physical science and
less on physical adventure and horror.^ Although Ray
Cummings1 adventure stories (the first of which, The Girl
in the Golden Atom, was published in 1919) generally
involved only a single scientific (or quasi-scientific)
premise, and Otis Adalbert Kline's swashbuckling heroes of
space and the jungle (in stories published in 1929 and
after) were no more versed in science than Tarzan or John
Carter, a number of authors seem to have shifted their
attention away from the mere "extraordinary journey.
The noted mathematician Eric Temple Bell, whose science
fiction began appearing in 1924 under the name of "John
Taine," varied the formula in that he used eccentric scien
tists as heroes, who uncover and attempt to explain mysteri
ous phenomena in distant lands on Earth. A leaden style
and a sophomoric sense of humor mar both these earlier
books arid his later, more mature, more intellectual novels
such as Seeds of Life (1931, about an accidental superman)
and Before the Dawn (1934, about the reconstruction, by
^Explorers, pp. 225-242; Isaac Asimov, "Social
Science Fiction," in Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning
and its Future, ed. Reginald Bretnor (New York, 1953),
pp~. 168-171. to Gernsback, see also P. O'Neil, "Barnum of
the Space Age," Life, July 26, 1963, pp. 62-64.
^ Explorers, pp. 185-187, 196.
means of an ingenious time-photographing device, of the
46
prehistoric life of the dinosaurs). But the dominant
variation of science fiction in the late Twenties and early
Thirties was a form called "space opera."
Space opera (so named by analogy with "horse opera,
or popular fiction about the American Old West) could be
described as situating against a galactic background the
traditional forms of the "war story," "spy story," "histor
ical novel," and "western," singly or in combination, but
it was also more than that, for, in order to write at all
convincingly of the future, an author had to make some kind
of projections regarding science and technology. These
stories, novels, and series, sometimes extending to a
considerable length, still featured adventure-seeking
heroes who were powerful and pure (even chaste), but much
of their power was becoming "brain power," as indicated by
their ability to invent fantastic machines on the spur of
the moment (machines which worked immediately and infal
libly, and invariably saved the day). And the merely
linear strings of adventures, on the model of Verne and
Burroughs, gave way to panoramic intrigues, involving
rulers and races of many different worlds and multi-world
46
For a very short biographical sketch, see
"Editor’s Preface" to John Taine, "Writing a Science Novel,
in Of Worlds Beyond; The Science of Science Fiction Writ
ing, ed. Lloyd Arthur Eschbach (Reading, Pennsylvania,
1947; reprinted Chicago, 1964), pp. 21-22.
24
alliances, which usually were resolved only by three-
dimensional (and four-dimensional) space battles of ’ ’ epic1 1
scope. ^ E. E. ("Doc") Smith, whose "Skylark" and "Lensman"
series (four and six volumes, respectively, in recent paper
back reprints) stretch from 1928 to his death in 1965,
48
rarely deviated from this pattern. Some of his contempo
raries, however, were more flexible and capable of develop
ment. Edmond ("World Saver") Hamilton, whose stories were
first published in 1926, was known in the Forties almost
exclusively as the author of the violent juvenile adventure
series, Captain Future, but he adapted to later forms of
49
science fiction as well. Jack Williamson began with a
combination of space opera and the exotic horror associated
with A. Merritt, but he soon mastered the sociological
extrapolation typical of the next era; his novel The
Humanoids (1948, about the insidious implications of a
"race" of humanoid robots devoted to protecting man from
all harm) was one of the first books of American science
fiction translated into French and German after World War
11."^ Campbell, whose fiction appeared almost entirely in
^ Asimov, pp. 169-171; Basil Davenport, Inquiry
into Science Fiction (New York, London, and Toronto, 1955),
pp. 17-30.
48
Moskowitz, Seekers (above, note 41), pp. 9-26.
49
Seekers, pp. 66-83.
^Seekers, pp. 84-100; the early date of the trans
lation of The Humanoids is mentioned in correspondence with
25
the Thirties, became better known as an editor.
Astounding Stories (founded January, 1930) became
Astounding Science Fiction as of March, 1938, and changed
again in the Sixties to Analog (Science Fact and Fiction,
later Science Fact--Science Fiction, now Science Fiction--
Science Fact). Throughout all these changes, and in fact
from the October issue of 1937, its editor has been John W.
Campbell, Jr., who for more than a decade was practically
the literary dictator of science fiction, and who still
exerts considerable influence in a market no longer totally
dependent on the pulp magazines. From the first, Campbell
emphasized the need for sound application of scientific
theory, consideration of its likely impact on society, and
a sense of organizing thought or philosophy, within the
framework of "a good yarn," i.e., an interesting, even
exciting story. He has paid well for stories meeting his
qualifications, has given encouragement and editorial advice
to writers he thought promising, and has even given away
story ideas by the handful at periodic conferences with his
51
writers.
Campbell also has campaigned in writing for the kind
of science fiction he wanted to see. His monthly editorials
Pierre Versins and Jurgen vom Scheidt (above, note 38) and
is supported by Bingenheimer (above, note 30).
Explorers, pp. 336-343; Asimov, pp. 171-177;
Seekers, pp. 27-46. See also Roul Tunley, "Unbelievable
But True, Saturday Evening Post, October 8, 1960, pp. 90-
92.
26
frequently contain scientific or quasi-scientific hypotheses
which may serve as ideas for stories, when he is not lashing
out at complacent Establishment attitudes toward science and
research, art and literature, national and international
52
politics. In articles for more general publications, he
usually defends his conception of science fiction and/or
53
challenges others to master it. At his most belligerent,
Campbell has even denied that science fiction is literature,
at least in the sense that the latter, he believes, is con
cerned mainly with human character and the "eternal"
verities: 'Vhere classical values hold that human nature is
enduring, unchanging, and uniform, science-fiction holds
that it is mutable, complex, and differentiated. ..."
The main function for science fiction, he asserts in the
same article, is prophecy, a role for which scientists (and
science-fiction writers) are well-qualified because they are
"Universe-Directed," motivated mainly by a search for truth
in the physical universe, but a role which, translated into
literature, leaves scant room for matters of opinion and
52
See John W. Campbell, Collected Editorials from
"Analog," ed. Harry Harrison (Garden City, 1966).
~^John W. Campbell, Jr., "The Place of Science
Fiction," in Bretnor (a T e, note 44); "Science Fact and
Science Fiction," Write August, 1964, pp. 26-27; "The
Science of Science-Fic' .," The Atlantic Monthly, May,
1948, pp. 97-98; "The . .ence of Science Fiction Writing,"
in Eschbach (above, note 46); "The Value of Science
Fiction," in Science Marches On, ed. James Stokley (New
York, 1951).
27
other factors in human character: "The scientist will
appear from the viewpoint of someone who considers opinion
the dominant force in reality [Campbell's favorite "straw
man"]--rigid, cold-blooded, emotionless, and authoritarian-
dogmatic. He isn't; the Universe is, and he's acting simply
54
as the messenger of the Universe.
This controversial article represented an extreme
position even for Campbell; in the fiction he publishes, he
does not encourage characterization which is either totally
wooden ("rigid, cold-blooded, emotionless, and authoritar
ian-dogmatic") or so "mutable, complex, and differentiated"
as to be unrecognizable from contemporary life or from
traditional pulp fiction. Indeed, the concern for social
extrapolation almost made it necessary for writers in
Astounding to create some kind of human norm in character,
by which to measure the effects of their projections.
Although some of these writers developed something in the
way of a distinct literary style, most of their work had
other characteristics in common, too; it generally was
written with a matter-of-fact tone, a veneer of superficial
realism, and a stress on ideas and their potential, i.e.,
in the Campbell manner.
Isaac Asimov, Hal Clement, L. Sprague de Camp,
“ *^John W. Campbell, Jr., "Science-Fiction and the
Opinion of the Universe," Saturday Review, May 12, 1956,
p. 10.
28
Lester del Re}*-, Robert Heinlein, Eric Frank Russell,
Theodore Sturgeon, and A. E. Van Vogt were either first
published, or quickly discovered and developed in Campbell's
Astounding. In addition, writers who were already fairly
well established managed to adapt themselves to Campbell's
demands, among them Murray Leinster (first published in
1919), Clifford Simak (1933), C. L. Moore (1933), and Henry
Kuttner (1936)."^ Together with Campbell, they produced the
shift to what Moskowitz calls "modern" science fiction, and
Asimov, I believe more aptly, calls "social" science
fiction. And it was their stories, especially in the many
anthologies that followed World War II, which won for pulp
science fiction its first critical and popular attention.
In 1945, there were eight science fiction magazines
r / :
in the United States; in 1952, there were over thirty. As
of 1948, fifteen anthologies of what was more or less
science fiction had been published; as of 1951, the total
was thirty-eight, a number which was doubled in the next
two years; in 1954 alone, thirty anthologies were
■^Moskowitz, Seekers (above, note 41) has chapters
on all of these but one: Ssimov, pp. 249-265; de Camp,
pp. 151-166; del Rey, pp. 167-186; Heinlein, pp. 187-212;
Russell, pp. 133-150; Sturgeon, pp. 229-248; Van Vogt,
pp. 213-228; Leinster, pp. 47-65; Simak, pp. 266-282; Moore,
pp. 303-318; Kuttner, pp. 319-334. Clement receives brief
notice, pp. 415-416.
C
Anthony Boucher, "The Publishing of Science
Fiction," in Bretnor (above, note 44), p. 33; see also
"Science Fiction Rockets into Big Time, Business Week,
October 20, 1951, pp. 82-84, 89.
29
57
published. Until 1946, what science fiction appeared in
books was almost always printed by fans in semi-professio'nal
CO
publishing houses. By 1950, with a number of major
publishers competing, the number of new books in a year had
reached sixty, an average maintained throughout the follow
ing decade.As of 1951-52, a hard-cover book by one
author could be counted on to sell from 5,000 to 10,000
copies, an anthology might sell 30,000, and a paperback
could expect sales of from 200,000 to 1,000,000 copies.^
The increasing impact of science fiction could be seen in
other areas, too. Articles popularizing, explaining, and
criticizing science fiction appeared more often in general
61
and literary periodicals. Mass-circulation magazines
“ ^Statistics compiled from W. R. Cole, A Checklist
of Science Fiction Anthologies ([New York], 1964).
58
Boucher, ppo 37-38; see also Algis Budrys,
"Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy, October, 1965, pp. 142-150.
■^Boucher, pp. 36-39. See also the annual summaries
of the year * s books in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction (F&SF) by Boucher and co-editor J. Francis McComas,
Winter-Spring, 1950; April, 1951; April, 1952; March, 1953;
March, 1954; and by Boucher alone, March, 1955; March, 1956;
March, 1957; March, 1958. See also J. Francis McComas,
"The Spaceman’s Little Nova," New York Times Book Review,
November 20, 1955, p. 53, and Judith Merril, "The Year's
S-F: A Summary," The Year’s Best S-F, 5th annual edition
(New York, 1961), p. 314.
fin
Boucher, in Bretnor, pp. 37-38; Business Week
(above, note 56).
fin
By my count, five articles were published between
1936 and 1945, nine more appeared from 1946 through 1950,
followed by four in 1951, eight in 1952, and twenty-one in
1953. Some, but not all, of these articles are listed below
in Bibliography B: Secondary Works.
30
began to publish science fiction, including stories by such
acknowledged American pulp writers as Ray Bradbury, Robert
A. Heinlein, and Murray Leinster, and their British counter
parts, John Christopher, Arthur C. Clarke, and John
62
Wyndham. Science fiction also began to show up in films
(frequently and significantly transformed into horror
movies) and on television (which it first entered in the
guise of such children's adventure programs as Captain
63
Video, Space Patrol, and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet).
This economic boom in science fiction was due mainly
to factors other than good writing. In the aftermath of a
war unprecedented in size and scope, and in its emphasis on
technology (climaxed by the harnessing of atomic energy, an
achievement long anticipated by science fiction fans), some
of the reasons for the surge in popularity of pulp science
fiction surely included its reputation for technological
prediction, its promise of exploring the dreams and night
mares made possible by science, and its essentially escapist
appeal.
The first of these, the reputation for prediction,
62
Boucher, in Bretnor, pp. 33-34. Moskowitz,
Seekers includes similar references, and chapters on
Bradbury, pp. 352-373; Clarke, pp. 374-391; and Wyndham,
pp. 118-132.
Don Fabun, "Science Fiction in Motion Pictures,
Radio, and Television," in Bretnor, pp. 43-70. See also
Jacques Siclier, Images de la Science Fiction (Paris, 1958),
and Paul S. Nathan, Books into Films," Publisher's Weekly,
June 18, 1949, p. 2463.
31
was largely undeserved. Most predictions in science fiction
are wrong, and the more detailed and remote they are, the
more wrong guesses result. The relatively few predictions
in science fiction that succeed, usually do so because of
luck or because the writer is already familiar with research
leading almost inevitably to the result he (along with the
£\Ll
researcher) expects. Actually, prediction in science
fiction is primarily a matter of literary convention; each
story generally assumes certain future possibilities
proposed by other stories already existent, then introduces
one or more variations more or less logically extrapolated
from either the present or this conventional future, varia
tions which are highly improbable as actual predictions.
The other two reasons offered above for science
fiction's surge in popularity tend to cancel each other out,
as far as most readers are concerned. A person who wants
his reading matter to explore social problems of the present
and their likely results and possible solutions in the
future will recognize that science and technology may cause,
and solve, some of these problems, but he will probably not
be very interested in stories of fantasy and unlikely
adventure, set in a distant time or place. On the other
(\Ll
Robert A. Heinlein, "Science Fiction: Its Nature,
Faults, and Virtues," in Basil Davenport et al., The Science
Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism, 2nd ed.
(Chicago, 19b4), ppT 30-40. See also G. Harry Stine,
"Science Fiction is Too Conservative," Analog, May, 1951,
pp. 83-99.
32
hand, someone looking for instant gratification of his
desires is also unlikely to appreciate fiction that continu
ally involves him in solving problems, some of which are
uncomfortably close to the problems he is trying to forget.
The remaining newcomers, presumably tolerant toward
both fantasy and the solving of problems, may be divided
into three general groupings, which are not mutually exclu
sive: fans, browsers, and critics. The lack of any large
numerical gain in fans may be indicated by the gradual
decline of the pulp magazines: in 1953, forty-three
magazines published at least one issue each, and of those
forty-three, seven survived through 1967, some in a perpetu
ally shaky financial situation, seldom if ever with a
circulation (including foreign editions) that ever surpassed
f i ^
150,000. The fact that a large number of people learned
to read some science fiction, however, is indicated by the
paperback market and the proliferation of science fiction
outside the pulps. The number of volumes published aver
aged around sixty through most of the Fifties, then took a
Data on number of magazines compiled from Day
Index, MIT Index, NESFA supplements (above, note 36).
Circulation figures of 125,000 for Galaxy (plus eight
foreign editions) and 135,000 for Astounding (in American
and English editions) are cited without documentation by
Amis (above, note 6), p. 57, and a circulation for Astound
ing of 150,000 is claimed by Campbell, in Bretnor, p. 2l,
but publishers' legal statements for the years 1960-1968
show the following circulation figures rounded off to the
nearest thousand: Analog (Astounding) climbed steadily from
74,000 to 102,000; Galaxy fell from 92,000 to 75,000; F&SF
had a low of 48,000 (i960), a high of 57,000 (1961), and an
average of 53,000.
33
large jump to about 100 in 1960 and 1961, and most of these
66
were paperbacks. Twenty-five or more paperback lines now
feature something called science fiction, including pulp
serials from the Twenties and Thirties, stories and novel
ettes puffed up or pasted together, "quickies" by middlebrow
writers of contemporary fiction, and a few novels and
collections of stories of some quality by writers in and
67
out of the science fiction community. Outside the pulp
magazines' immediate sphere of influence, according to
Judith Merril, in her fifth annual Best S-F anthology, the
number of science fiction stories in general and literary
periodicals increased from about 50 in 1955 to over 200 in
6R
1959. And films and television have seen some notable
achievements, along with a number of disasters, in their
continued attempts to adapt science fiction to media of
• + . 69
mass entertainment.
Anthony Boucher , "S-F Books--1960," The Year * s
Best S-F, ed. Judith Merril, 6th annual edition (New York,
1962), p. 378.
f i 7
Paperback books from more than twenty American
publishers are listed in the catalogs of F&SF Book Co. of
Staten Island, New York. Catalogs from Fantast (Medway)
Ltd., in Wisbech, England, identify five and sometimes more
independent British paperback publishers.
^Merril (above, note 59), p. 314.
69
"Hugo" winners have included the film Dr. Strange-
love (1965 dramatic award), the television series The
Twilight Zone (1960-1962), and the episode "The Menagerie"
from the television series Star Trek (1967). See also Susan
Sontag, "imagination of Disaster," Against Interpretation
(New York, 1966), for an unfavorable critical appraisal of
science fiction in the movies.
34
Criticism came from both inside and outside the
science fiction community, and in numerous forms. Essays of
many kinds (articles, chapters, symposia, books, doctoral
dissertations) also appeared mainly after 1950, most of them
polemical or didactic. Adherents of science fiction have
gone so far as to say that it is the only kind of literature
that matters today, sometimes supporting their argument by
the circular reasoning that science fiction alone takes into
account the effect of science and technology on man's
present and past, and especially on his future.^ Its
detractors have responded with half-truths, based partly on
an insufficient or indiscriminate sampling, to the effect
that the science in science fiction is negligible and often
bogus, that the fiction is composed mainly of passe conven
tions, warmed-over mythology, stylistic cliches, and inept
writing in general, and that the whole is supported by a
shallow and pretentious philosophy.^ At various times,
This argument is usually proposed in conversation,
but modified forms of it can be found in Heinlein. (above,
note 64), pp. 53 ff., and in Edmund Crispin's introduction
to his anthology Best SF Three: Science Fiction Stories
(London, 1958), pp. 9-13.
^See, for example, the following essays: John
Lear, "Let's Put Some Science into Science-Fiction," Popular
Science Monthly, August, 1954, pp. 135-137, 244-248; Arthur
Koestler, "The Boredom of Fantasy," Trail of the Dinosaur
(New York, 1955); Siegfried Mandel and Peter Fingesten, "The
Myth of Science Fiction," Saturday Review, August 27, 1955,
pp. 7-8, 24-25, 28; Joseph Kostolefsky, "Science, Yes--
Fiction, Maybe," Antioch Review, June, 1953, pp. 236-240;
Thomas P. McDonnell, "The Cult of Science Fiction," Catholic
World, October, 1953, pp. 15-18.
35
science fiction has been hailed as a powerful agent of
social criticism, damned as dangerous escapism, hailed as
big business, belittled as childishness, and even admired
72
as a minor kind of poetry.
The net result of most of this writing could be
summed up in three brief statements: (1) we don't know
exactly what science fiction is, but (2) not everyone likes
it, and (3) there is probably room for improvement. Fortu
nately, some bibliographical and historical research has
been done, making it possible, if not to define science
fiction, at least to point to what it has been and has
included, and some theorizing has been done with the aid of
a dispassionate examination of more than a handful of
convenient examples, so that we know something about the
peculiar situation of science fiction that gives rise to
the second statement above. As for the third, a number of
people tried to do something about it.
Four new pulp magazines, started between 1946 and
1952, are still in business. To some extent their survival
is due to the demands of their editors for more or less
72
See, for example, the following essays: L. W.
Michaelson, "Science Fiction, Censorship, and Pie-in-the-
Sky," Western Humanities Review, XIII, 4 (Autumn, 1959),
409-413; Bruno Bettelheim, I’ he Informed Heart (Glencoe,
Illinois, 1960), pp. 52-63; H. W. Hausermann, "Science
Fiction, A New Kind of Mass Literature," Levende Talen
(Brussels), CLXXXI (1955), 394-405; Angelica Gibbs, "Onward
and Upward with the Arts: Inertrum, Neutronium, Chromaloy,
P-P-P-Proot!" The New Yorker, February 13, 1943, pp. 42-53;
C. S. Lewis, "On Stories" (1947), Of Other Worlds (New York,
1966).
36
polished writing and for an emphasis on psychological
themes, character, and personal involvement sufficient to
characterize the period since 1950 as the era of "psycho
logical" science fiction. The Magazine of Fantasy and
Science Fiction (F&SF) was founded in 1949 (the first issue
was titled The Magazine of Fantasy) and emphasized from the
start a sense of style and fictional technique even at the
expense of story and scientific content. A year later,
Galaxy Science Fiction (now Galaxy Magazine) released its
first issue, stressing sociological (and psychological)
extrapolation, social criticism, and satire in a well-made
frame. In 1952, IF, Worlds of Science Fiction made its
first appearance, specializing in the kind of technological-
sociological extrapolation which made Astounding famous, but
edited more strictly for story values. Meanwhile, Campbell
had become more and more interested in fiction which dealt
with "psionics" (or para-psychological engineering) and with
probable inventions and developments on earth and in space
in the very near future (treated almost as documentary).
The other new magazine, New Worlds, was British; founded in
1946, it survived competition with the higher-paying
American magazines and their British editions, and became in
the Sixties the leader in the kind of subtle and intricate
literary puzzles and exercises in symbolism, full of
personal involvement, which Judith Merril sees as the new
"SF" (speculative fantasy) that is breaking down the
37
barriers between science fiction and literature in
general
In 1953, the first "Hugos" were awarded, at the
Eleventh World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia;
the tradition has continued since 1955, indicating the
desire of the fans to award, and therefore encourage,
quality in science fiction.^ In the pulps and fanzines of
the Fifties, book review columns became a commonplace.^
Although many reviews were little more than shopping lists,
those written by Damon Knight and James Blish frequently
indulged in genuine criticism, a practice revived in the
7 6
Sixties by Judith Merril and Algis Budrys. In addition,
a number of anthologies began to appear, claiming to be
representative of the best science fiction written, or at
least the best of the year, each accompanied by an intro
duction which not only summed up the contents, but also
Judith Merril, "What Do You Mean--Science?/
Fiction?" Extrapolation, VII (May, 1966), 30-46, VIII
(December, 1966), 2-19, and The Year's Best S-F, 7th-llth
Annual Editions (New York, 1962-66) . Publication data
from indexes listed above (notes 33 and 35).
^See note 37, above.
^Budrys (above, note 58), p. 143.
7 fi
Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder: Essays on
Modern Science Fiction, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1967); William
Atheling, Jr. LJames Blish], The Issue at Hand: Studies in
Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction, ed. James Blish
(Chicago, 1964); Judith Merril, book reviews, F&SF, monthly
(with a few exceptions) since March, 1965; Algis Budrys,
book reviews, Galaxy, every issue since February, 1965.
38
pointed the way toward what the editor viewed as improve
ment . ^ ^
All the scourging and awards, encouragement and
exhortation in the world, of course, would be merely so
much more in the way of wasted words if the writers them
selves did not take seriously the need to better themselves
in the eyes of the outside world and of the increasingly
aware fans. And all the attempts at improvement, no matter
how well motivated and grounded in the study of classics
and contemporaries, would also be worthless if the writers
were unable to write any better, or their material were
intractable to any other treatment than that which was
visible in the past. The motivation was there, in the mood
of the community (the desire for respectability), and in
the need to compete, in both the pulps and the general
magazines, with writers more polished, if less trained in
7 8
science fiction, than those inside the community. The
For example: The Year's Best Science Fiction
Stories, ed. Everett Bleiler and T. E. Dikty (New York,
1949-1954); S-F: The Year*s Greatest Science-Fiction and
Fantasy, changed in 1960 to The Year's Best S-F, ed. Judith
Merril (New York, since 1956); Best SF: Science Fiction
Stories to Best SF Five: Science Fiction Stories, ed.
Edmund Crispin (London, 1954, 1956, 1968, 1961, T964).
78
Stories by writers outside the science fiction
community can frequently be found in F&SF, in regard to
which see James Yaffe, The Modern Trend Toward Meaningful
Martians,” Saturday Review, April 23, 1960, p. 22. See
also The "Post' 1 Reader of "Fantasy and Science Fiction
(Garden City, 1964) and The "Playboy" Book of Science
Fiction and Fantasy (Chicago, 1966).
39
ability was there: Asimov, Clarke, Sturgeon, Alfred Bester,
Hal Clement, Frederick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, and John
Wyndham, all of whom had written science fiction since the
late Thirties or early Forties, wrote their best books in
the Fifties. And the material was not inflexible, as was
shown not only by such outsiders as Bernard Wolfe, Kurt
Vonnegut, Jr., William Golding, and Anthony Burgess, but
also by the new writers inside the science fiction commu
nity. In the Fifties, such new writers included James
Blish, Algis Budrys, Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer,
Walter M. Miller, Jr., and Edgar Pangborn, each of whom
developed his own style and subject matter largely on his
own, with the concept of science fiction as literature at
least in sight. In the Sixties, important new writers
include three Americans, Samuel Delany, Roger Zelazny, and
Cordwainer Smith, and two Britons, Brian Aldiss and J. G.
Ballard, each of whom seems to be at least partly convinced,
not only that science fiction can be, but that it is,
literature.
As long ago as 1953, Reginald Bretnor, in his
pioneering symposium on science fiction, predicted the
return of science fiction to literary status: "Eventually,
we will again have an integrated literature. It will owe
much, artistically, to non-science fiction. But its
dominant attitudes and purposes, regardless of whether it
happens to be dealing with the past, 'the present,' or the
40
future--will have evolved from those of modern science
79
fiction." The major contribution of science fiction to
this integrated literature, he felt, would be that attitude
which most distinguished science fiction from other forms
of writing, an "awareness of the importance of the scien
tific method as a human function and of the human potential
ities inherent in its exercise," an awareness which at best
revealed itself "not only in plot and circumstance, but
also through the thoughts and motivations of the charac
ters ," and which at least took the form of an awareness of
80
"certain potential products of the scientific method."
Warning that this integrated literature would not be science
fiction as it was and had been, Bretnor also cautioned
against any immediate expectations of the millennium. The
problem, as he saw it, was one of cultural lag: most people
were not yet willing even to accept science, let alone
• j- • 81
science fiction.
Some of Bretnor's predictions, regarding the early
stages of the transition, seem to have come true. Critical
and scholarly interest in science fiction has increased,
although it still seems largely apologetic in tone. The
market for science fiction in general did expand, although
79
Reginald Bretnor, "The Future of Science Fiction,"
in Modern Science Fiction (see above, note 44), p. 292.
^Bretnor, p. 273.
81
Bretnor, passim.
41
the fortunes of the pulps have fluctuated. The use of
science fictional themes in serious short stories has also
grown, unless Judith Merrilfs annual survey anthologies
represent merely a broadening or adulteration of the term
82
"SF" as some of her critics charge. In addition, there
are other indications that the cultural lag between scien
tific and public knowledge may be decreasing. Books and
articles, magazines and magazine sections presenting science
for the layman seem to have increased in number, especially
since the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was put into
orbit in 1957; as Martin Green noted in 1965, however, in a
book about one literary man's crash program of education in
the sciences, many of these books and articles are next to
useless in narrowing the gap between the "two cultures" of
83
the sciences and the humanities. Jacques Barzun, in a
survey of contemporary art, finds a great deal of utiliza
tion of the scientific method, as well as of products of
technology, but both, he maintains, are being used by the
artist in an attempt to escape from a world made untenable
84
for him by these same agents, science and technology. In
82
See, for example, Algis Budrys' reviews of
Merril's ninth and tenth annual volumes, Galaxy, April,
1965, and August, 1966.
83
Martin Green, Science and the Shabby Curate of
Poetry (New York, 1965).
84
Jacques Barzun, Classic. Romantic and Modern, rev.
ed. (Garden City, 1961), pp"! l40-±46.
business and industry, in government, and in everyday life,
people are becoming more aware, not only of new technolog
ical developments, but also of the need for planning and
projecting developments into the future. Such books as
Designing the Future, On Thermonuclear War, Thinking the
Unthinkable, The Dynamics of Change, The Year 2000, and
Toward the Year 2018 are undoubtedly making more people
aware of Bretnor's second stage of science fictional think
ing, i.e., an awareness of the scientific method not only
in terms of its products, but also in terms of its role in
O tr
"circumstance and plot." From this point it may be
possible for some readers to progress to the third stage of
awareness, wherein the "human function" of the scientific
method and "the human potentialities inherent in its
exercise" can be seen to play a role in "the thoughts and
motivations of [fictional] characters."
Bretnor's major prediction, however, that we will
have an integrated literature, has not yet been realized.
A large number of writers outside the movement have written
8 S
Robert W. Prehoda, Designing the Future: The
Role of Technological Forecasting (Philadelphia, 1967);
Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton, 1961); Herman
Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable (New York, 1962); Don
Fabun, The Dynamics of Change (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey,
1967); Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000:
A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years
(New York, 1967); Toward the Year 2018, ed. Foreign Policy
Association (New York, 1968). For a brief, general essay
on such predicting, see Daniel Bell's introduction to the
Kahn and Wiener volume, pp. xxi-xxviii.
43
novels, plays, and stories to some extent science fictional
since 1950, but many of these are no better written than
their pulp counterparts, and few of them show any awareness
of science beyond Bretnor's first level.^ A few science
fiction writers may have received some critical attention
outside the pulp field, but rarely in regard to the science
87
fictional nature of their works. Then, too, the phrase
"science fiction" is probably familiar to most people today,
but those to whom it signifies horror movies or such
juvenalia as the television series Lost in Space, and those
to whom it means predictions that "science is catching up
to," like heart transplants and moon rockets, no doubt
vastly outnumber the relative few who can relate it to the
88
scientific method at all.
O fi
Among these writers, books by whom are cited
below in Bibliography A (see above, note 11), are the
following: Martin Caidin, Nigel Dennis, David Ely, Howard
Fast, Pat Frank, Diana and Meir Gillon, John Hersey, Shirley
Jackson, John D. MacDonald, Warren Miller, Ayn Rand, Nevil
Shute, George R. Stewart, Gore Vidal, Leonard Wibberly, and
Angus Wilson.
87
Ray Bradbury, for example, is sometimes singled
out for attention because he is not strictly science
fictional in his writing. Reviews of A Canticle for
Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., tended to downgrade its
science fiction content (see below, Chapter V).
88
See, for example, "Outpaced by Space," Time,
January 14, 1963, pp. 71-72, and "Overtaking the Future,"
Newsweek, October 8, 1962, p. 104. The assumptions in these
articles are refuted to some extent in Isaac Asimov, "Fact
Catches Up with Fiction," New York Times Magazine, November
19, 1961, pp. 34, 39, 42, VT.
44
But ignorance of science is not the only reason
offered for disliking science fiction, and it is highly
improbable that the general and literary publics have failed
to appreciate science fiction merely because they have never
been fully exposed to it. The adverse criticism science
fiction has received often is based on at least some reading
of stories and novels by authors featured frequently in the
pulp magazines, and this criticism tends to center on four
general features which seem to be basic to the genre, at
least as it presently exists. These central issues, fan
tasy, science, pulp qualities, and homogeneity, will be
examined in more depth in Chapter II.
CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL OVERVIEW
The historical antecedents claimed for modern
science fiction, such as the fantastic journey, the utopian
blueprint, the marvelous discovery, the gods and devils of
mythology, the elves and witches and such of fairy tales,
the horrors of Gothic and dystopian romance, all share
certain characteristics with science fiction, and in fact,
versions of all of these antecedents exist in some form
today in the general area referred to as science fiction.
Since they existed before science fiction, and can exist
without science or the scientific mentality, such motifs
obviously do not define science fiction, however inter
twined with it they may have become, and however significant
such connections may seem.
Insofar as it has a distinct character, science
fiction depends far more on its connections with science
than with such more or less accidental features, which
point to its similarities with other literature rather than
to its individuality. For it is modern science which is at
the root of the difference between Plato's Republic or
45
46
More's Utopia and Wells's A Modern Utopia or B. F. Skinner's
Walden Two, between a trip to the moon in Lucian's time and
one in our own, between the devil-figures of the magician
and the scientist, between the titillating horrors of
Lewis' The Monk and the prophetic horrors of Orwell's 1984.
Although a given science fiction writer may know little more
about science than a tribal storyteller knows about his
shaman's secret lore, the conventions which make up science
fiction have been developed from certain assumptions about
the role of science, pure and applied, in the history,
prehistory, and future history of man and the universe.
And despite the myriad variations and manipulations, modifi
cations and distortions to which these conventions can be
and have been subjected in fiction, a scientific conception
of the world is basic to the conventions themselves.
Regardless of the religious, philosophical, or
political beliefs of any given scientist as a man, he
assumes as a scientist certain axioms about the nature of
the phenomena with which he is dealing, and about certain
goals toward which his activity is directed. He may believe
in some degree of free will, but he must assume that the
causes and conditions of events can be determined with a
high degree of probability. He may believe in certain human
values, in normative behavior, in moral and ethical abso
lutes, but he must strive to prevent them from interfering
with an objective interpretation of things. He may believe
47
in a Higher Being and a Higher Truth, but as a scientist he
must assume that truth reveals itself in ways which can be
repeatedly sensed and measured by men and their mechanical
extensions. And no matter what purpose his work may ulti
mately serve, he must first strive to predict the fulfill
ment of his hypotheses, to control the succession of events
in terms of the fewest possible variables, and to comprehend
the phenomena before him intellectually, in terms of how
things work.
Given these assumptions, which may loosely be called
determinism, relativism, and empiricism, and these goals,
which we may term prediction, control, and comprehension,
science and scientists have been quite successful in narrow
ing the odds that man must face in his confrontation with
his environment in its physical, social, and even psycholog-
1
ical manifestations. Contemplating their success, one
could easily take the short step necessary to formulate a
belief that the scientific view is the only effective and
This theory of the basic goals and assumptions of
science, proposed by Professor Robert Friedrichs in his
course, "introduction to Cultural Anthropology," Drew
University, Fall, 1958, I can find no fault with, after
considerable readings in the history and philosophy of
science, other than that problem which Friedrichs himself
admitted: few scientists or philosophers, since the early
twentieth century, would state the case so baldly, since we
now know the principles of determinism, relativism, and
empiricism have no absolute validity. But people, even
scientists, do tend to depend on oversimplifications such
as these when they are not constrained to think, speak, or
write with the utmost precision.
48
useful way of describing the universe and all that goes on
in it; untempered by other considerations, the scientific
world view can lead to a regard for science as a most
2
unscientific absolute.
Such a scientistic hypothesis, and the assumptions
and goals leading up to it, I submit, lie at the core of
science fiction, and are at least partly responsible for
many features, perpetuated and even approved of in science
fiction circles, which literary critics and other readers
who are not afficionados of the genre find inexplicable,
distasteful, or even reprehensible. To show how scientism
affects the literature, let us imagine an ideal type which
we shall call pure science fiction, many of whose features
we can see in science fiction as it exists.
Pure science fiction can be expected to deal largely
with things, facts, statistics, machines, measurable quanti
ties and forces, evidence of the senses, and interpretations
of phenomena derived mainly from mechanistic thinking. In
such a context, human values should be viewed primarily as
isolated phenomena, variations on which may be approved or
censured only on pragmatic grounds, such as whether the
species or society survives, whether the force or machine
works, whether the system functions smoothly and perpetuates
2
See, for example, F. A. Hayek, The Counter-
Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason
(Glencoe, Illinois, 1932), and Scientism and Values, ed.
Helmut Schoeck and James W. Wiggins (Princeton, i960).
49
itself. From this pragmatic viewpoint, the encouragement of
scientific investigation and technological innovation can
almost always be justified in terms of its survival value.
As the scientist attempts to predict the results of
an experiment, the writer of pure science fiction should try
to predict the outcome of certain forces at work in the
contemporary world. Not strictly predictive, the process
of imagining more or less probable worlds of the future is
usually called extrapolation, a term which signifies a
logical, and sometimes a chronological, extension of mathe
matical curves and trends of change and development. In
theory, extrapolation may range either forward or backward
in time, using as its base a setting in past, present, or
future, or even a kind of never-never land outside of time;
usually, the basic setting can be expected to be in the
3
present and the projection into the future.
Such a projection should, ideally, avoid the moral
directives associated with prophecy, merely indicating the
more or less probable result of the dynamics contained in a
given set of circumstances. Consistent with Zola's theory
of the "experimental novel," the writer of pure science
fiction should attempt to control only the beginning of his
story, selecting a setting, a cast of characters, and a
3
But not all stories set in the future should be
called science fiction. See I. F. Clarke, The Tale of the
Future: From the Beginning to the Present Day (London,
t w t t * ----------------- ----------------------
50
limited number of trends or ideas operating upon them,
letting the outcome emerge as if by itself. Presumably the
result of such a procedure would be an objective description
of what might happen in one possible future, leaving up to
the reader the question of morality or desirability and the
decision as to whether man should attempt to exert control
4
over the forces leading toward that future.
Although the given circumstances of the present and
the forces leading toward the imagined future may show
themselves in plot, setting, or explanations, or in various
conventions adopted by the author from other science fiction
stories, the extrapolative process itself is essentially
aliterary. It takes place most often before the act of
writing, often in minds other than the author's. Its truest
form of expression is the mathematical equation, whose
meaning for man is usually more intellectual than artistic.
In literature, extrapolation is most at home in a relatively
technical essay, working out a prediction as logically as
possible from a carefully described set of original condi
tions. In style as in form such an essay should be
aliterary, i.e., its language should be scientific rather
than poetic, calling no attention to itself or to its
author, its aim should be communication of concepts more
than of a sense of style, and its major goal should be to
^See Basil Davenport, Inquiry into Science Fiction
(New York, London, and Toronto, 1955), pp. 31-44.
51
elicit from the reader a response which stresses intellec
tual comprehension more than it does sensual or emotional
experience. ^
If pure science fiction is indeed scientistic in
origin, extrapolative in intent, and essayistic in form, we
can expect certain aliterary or even anti-literary tenden
cies in the imaginative literature (fiction, drama, poetry)
derived from that ideal. Things will be more important than
people; the brain will predominate over the heart; ideas,
more than experience, will be basic to setting, character,
and plot. These three principles, which the Goncourt
Brothers found in Poe, many readers have found objectionable
in nineteenth-century Naturalism.^ There, as in science
fiction, scientistic tendencies were at work, and the
results in many cases included a flat, unembellished style,
a theoretical plan of structure and message, an analytical,
sometimes simplistic treatment of behavior, motivation, and
ideas, and an amoral lack of involvement. If a few authors,
^The relationship of science fiction to the "specu
lative essay" is also noted in Robert A. Heinlein, "Science
Fiction: Its nature, Faults, and Virtues," in Basil
Davenport et al., The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination
and Social Criticism, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1964), p. 58.
£
The Goncourts1 observation is quoted above, pp.Nll-
12. On naturalism, see, for example: Ferdinand Brunetiere,
Le Roman naturaliste, rev. ed. (Paris, 1892), passim;
P. Martino, Le Naturalism franqais (1870-1895) (Paris,
1923), especially pp. 1-6, 189-206, 214-217; Aloys Rob.
Schlismann, Beitrage zur Geschichte und Kritik des Natural-
ismus (Kiel and Leipzig, 1903), especially pp. 63-74.
52
notably Zola, managed to transcend these limitations, it was
largely through a plethora of details taken from actual life
situations, with which the reader could immediately iden
tify, and a strong sense of unscientific personal involve
ment transmitted to the reader by means of a good command of
fictional techniques. Where the source of the story is
essentially speculation rather than direct observation,
however, such details, as well as the main body of the work,
must be made up, and personal involvement will probably
stand out as a strong element of didacticism.
Of the three major elements mentioned above, set
ting, character, and plot, the first is the most easily
derived from logic and confidently explained by essay. An
alien planet can be deduced physically from natural laws
governing astronomical bodies, then its physical character
istics can be used in determining certain ecological
patterns, and these in turn may suggest possible human
responses, both individual and social.^ If the place is the
Earth and the time is the future, the science fiction
writer, like the Hudson Institute researchers who contrib
uted to The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation, can
deduce a "Standard World" and "Canonical Variations,"
^See, for example, the author's account of the
planning of Mission of Gravity; Hal Clement, "Whirligig
World," Astounding, June^ 1953, pp. 102-114. At the 1964
World Science Fiction Convention, Oakland, California, Frank
Herbert gave a talk of a similar nature, regarding the
working out of background for his novel, Dune.
53
choosing one of these or a modification based on further
extension of some independent variable, in order to arrive
8
at his social setting. In any case, he is likely to base
his extrapolation on changes or variations in civilization
as a whole, the most important of which will be not changes
in individual people but changes in the level of science and
9
technology.
Individuals need not be considered in making the
transition from the real world contemporaneous with the
writing to the fictional world in which the story takes
place, but they are necessary for the story which is to
unfold in that fictional world. Determined for the author
partly by his setting, partly by their role in illustrating
the forces he wishes to show at work in that setting, and
partly by his lack of concern for individuals to begin with,
they are quite likely to be character types rather than
three-dimensional figures, such as we are supposed to expect
O
Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener, The Year 2000:
A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-three Years
"(New” York” 1957) . --------- --------------------------
Q
"With a few exceptions, notably Chapter 8, I am
limiting myself to a single aspect of the future--its tech
nology, not the society that will be based upon it. This
is not such a limitation as it may seem for science will
dominate the future even more than it dominates the present.
Moreover, it is only in this field that prediction is at all
possible; there are some general laws governing scientific
extrapolation, as there are not (pace Marx) in the case of
politics or economics." Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the
Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible
(New York, Toronto, and London, 1965), p. xi.
from great literature. The protagonist should be a man of
science, who is the first to understand the problem, and
who solves it, if it can be solved, partly by means of logic
and planning, partly by means of manipulation of technology
and people. If the problem cannot be solved, he should be
the first to realize it and to recommend and plan escape,
retrenchment, or whatever can be done to alleviate whatever
adverse effects are likely. Since his predominant quality
is intelligence, his antagonist should be stupid, or at
least unreached by reason, and therefore more of an obstacle
than a villain. Such antagonists might include the mindless
powers of nature, extraterrestrial beings with whom no
agreement can be reached, and representatives of human
groups prevented from independent thought by inertia,
entrenched interests, or sheer bull-headedness (e.g., mili
tary men, bureaucrats, profiteers, do-gooders). An innocent
outsider is also useful, either as narrator or as foil, if
the author does not wish to address explanatory essays
directly to the reader, but other characters may well be
superfluous in pure science fiction, doubling or reinforcing
one of the three principals, or introducing interests and
considerations not germane to the central problem.
10
In a sociological survey of random stories listed
in the Day Index, scientists were found to be the most
frequent group whose members were cast as heroes, but scien
tists were also the most common villains (along with
businessmen, politicians, and the military). See Walter
Hirsch, "American Science Fiction, 1926-1950: A Content
Analysis," unpubl. diss. (Northwestern, 1957).
55
As the characters are somewhat determined by other
considerations, such as setting, theme, and plot, so the
plot of a science fiction novel, that is, the particular
twists and turns of causally related events which make up
the narrative, is also not a completely independent vari
able. The plot is most commonly one in which "action"
predominates, which, as Norman Friedman points out, is only
to be expected in popular literature:
We rarely, if ever, become involved here in any
serious moral or intellectual issue; nor does the
outcome have any far-reaching consequences for the
fortune, character, or thought of the protagonist,
leaving him free to start all over again, it may
be, in a sequel; and the pleasures we experience
are almost wholly those of suspense, expectation,
and surprise, the plot being organized around a
basic puzzle and solution cycle. There is a gang
ster to track down, a murderer to discover and
apprehend, a treasure to be gotten, or a planet to
be reached. Examples of this type are most
frequently found in those classes of fiction
called adventure, detective, western, and science-
fiction stories.il
Action, or simple interest in what happens next, is not the
sole intent of the science fiction writer--in fact, all
fourteen of Friedman's variations of plots of fortune,
character, and thought can be and have been used in science
fiction--but a "puzzle and solution cycle" is part of the
12
scientistic metaphysic. As the writer of mystery stories
1 1
Norman Friedman, "Forms of the Plot," in The
Theory of the Novel, ed. Philip Stevick (New York, T967),
p. 15o.
12
The fourteen categories, according to grouping,
are: action, pathetic, tragic, punitive, sentimental,
admiration (plots of fortune); maturing, reform, testing,
56
traditionally invites his reader to "play the game" along
with the detective, so the science fiction writer frequently
plants clues for the denouement of his book by means of
establishing the lines of extrapolation leading up to and
13
operating within his fictional setting. In both cases,
the solution to the problem brings with it a sense of
vicarious achievement for the reader, but the kind of
achievement varies significantly, the one being introverted,
the other extroverted. In the mystery story, the murderer
is a kind of scapegoat, the identification of whom, Auden
has suggested, lets the reader indulge his fantasy of "being
14
restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence.
In the science fiction story, innocence seems to be assumed
from the first, the victory over nature or unreason is a
temporary thing, reversible by time, and the fundamental
achievement is a hard-won beachhead in the territory of the
real enemy, the unknown.
This simplicity of design represents an ideal infre
quently, if ever, achieved; when pure science fiction, in
essay form, is converted to imaginative literature, it
degradation (plots of character); education, revelation,
affective, disillusionment (plots of thought). Friedman,
pp. 154-165.
13
See Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The
Life and Times of the Detective Story (New York and London,
1941), pp" 223-258.---------------
14W. H. Auden, "The Guilty Vicarage," The Dyer's
Hand (New York, 1962), p. 158.
57
becomes subject to the whims of the artist and the rules of
the literary form. Plot, character, setting, theme, struc
ture, or some other aspect of literature may become more
important than extrapolation; science and scientism may
become no more important than any other human institutions
15
or ideas, and may even take on negative values. Only
where there is a concerted effort to approach, or stay close
to the ideals of pure science fiction, can we expect those
ideals to remain fairly close to the surface. Such an
effort has been exerted in the American pulp science fiction
magazines for over forty years.
The proprietary interest evinced by science fiction
fans may thus have preserved the scientistic qualities
enumerated above. It has certainly contributed to the
identification of science fiction with such features of
popular literature as fantasy, the characteristic style of
the pulps, and an essential homogeneity of form as well as
of purpose. Yet each of these is closely bound up with the
pure form of science fiction as well, as should become
clearer as we proceed.
The relationship of fantasy to science fiction is a
complex one, even if only because the word "fantasy" (like
the phrase "science fiction") means different things to
15
Not everyone in the science fiction community
would agree that science fiction can attack science and
remain science fiction. See, for example, Heinleim (above,
note 5), pp. 59-60.
58
different people. In a psychological sense, popular liter
ature, including science fiction, can easily be regarded as
escapist fantasy.^ In a literary sense, we can see that
science fiction is a particular kind of such writings as are
called fantasies.^ Yet within the science fiction commu
nity, and to some extent outside it, an attempt is also made
to distinguish clearly between science fiction and fantasy,
as representative of the possible and impossible, respec-
18
tively. And all three of these interpretations are
Friedman, p. 158; Leslie A. Fiedler, Love and
Death in the American Novel (Cleveland and New York, T762),
pp. 472-480. See also Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in
America, ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White
(Glencoe, Illinois, 1957), and Robert C. O'Hara, Media for
the Millions: The Process of Mass Communication (New York,
1962). For a psychoanalytic treatment of all literature as
fantasy, see Norman N. Holland, The Dynamics of Literary
Response (New York, 1968).
17
"Most simply, science fiction may be considered
that continuing, recognizable genre within the broad scope
of fantasy which attempts to present the impact of the
mechanistic and allied sciences upon the imagination of
man." Thomas Dean Clareson, "The Emergence of American
Science Fiction: 1880-1915: A Study of the Impact of
Science upon American Romanticism," unpubl. diss.
(Pennsylvania, 1956). "Science fiction is a branch of
fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the 'willing
suspension of disbelief' on the part of its readers by
utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its
imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time,
social science, and philosophy." Sam Moskowitz, Explorers
of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction (Cleveland and
New York, 1968), p. IT!
18
The line between science fiction and fantasy
fluctuates, of course, depending on what a person regards as
possible, as indicated in L. Sprague de Camp, Science-
Fiction Handbook: The Writing of Imaginative Fiction
(New York, 1953), pp. 20-22.
59
applicable to our discussion.
In the first place, the basic plot of popular
fiction, a variation on the ancient motif of the quest,
supplies the reader with, as Friedman says, "suspense,
expectation, and surprise," and with a sense of vicarious
19
adventure and achievement. Identifying with the hero, he
too becomes heroic in this fantasy world, able to do extra
ordinary things, able to forget the major and minor frus
trations of daily life. This is what C. S. Lewis calls
"Normal Castle-building" of the "Egoistic" type, and it is
what most popular literature involves the reader in, pander
ing perhaps to the wishes he already has, and about which he
will do nothing if his daydream world is satisfactory
20
enough. But the specifically science fictional variety of
the quest involves a distinct sort of hero, a man of
science, with whom not everyone can identify; like a detec
tive, he uses reason to solve problems, like a cowboy, he
may use technology as a weapon, but his education involves
detailed knowledge of the physical and social environment,
which is brought to bear on that which is unknown, not only
to the characters in the book, but also to the reader, the
author, and man in general. Thus the escape of science
fiction may be into a larger reality, as it is into the
19
Friedman, p. 158.
20
C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
(Cambridge, England, 1965), p. 52.
60
21
possibilities of the future.
In terms of literary form and style, Herbert Read's
description of fantasy is instructive as it relates to
science fiction. Defining fantasy as a product of deliber
ate, rational speculation, he finds in it an extraversion of
feelings, a concern with objects, an apparent arbitrariness
22
of order, and an expository rather than a narrative style.
Read goes on from there to criticize H. G. Wells for not
quite reaching a state of pure fantasy: "He errs, as in
The Time Machine, by imparting to his fantasies a pseudo
scientific logicality; it is as though having conceived one
arbitrary fantasy he were compelled by the habits of his
scientific training to work out the consequences of this
fantasy. Real fantasy is bolder than this; it dispenses
with all logic and habit and relies on the force of wonder
23
alone." Wells's error, of course, is quite deliberate; he
is writing science fiction, for which that "one arbitrary
fantasy" supplies a framework to be filled in by imagina
tion, a faculty which Read finds to be introverted, sensu-
2 A *
ous, symbolic, and narrative, in opposition to fantasy.
21
A similar inference is drawn in Isaac Asimov,
"Escape into Reality," Is Anyone There? (Garden City, 1967),
pp. 283-290.
22
Herbert Read, English Prose Style (Boston, 1952),
pp. 125-127.
^Read, pp. 133-134.
^Read, pp. 125-127.
61
That "one arbitrary fantasy" to which Read refers
has been formulated into a rule by some science fiction
writers: Jack Williamson and Fletcher Pratt, for example,
have each stated that a science fiction story can have only
25
one such unexplained principle or assumption. Many
writers and critics have accepted this dictum implicitly,
as is shown by the frequent reference to "what if?" as a
guiding principle of science fiction, and indeed it is
suggestive of the tinder lying difference between science
26
fiction and outright fantasy as Read has defined it. But
it is a dictum honored more in the breach than in the
observance. Many stories which are ostensibly science
fiction can be found to have numerous fantasies, the expla
nation for which is either nonexistent or unconvincing.
And in an example of pure science fiction, we should expect
to find nothing which cannot be rationalized in terms of
extrapolation from contemporary reality.
Even assuming, however, that every departure from
the ordinary and present-day which made its appearance in a
work of science fiction were explained in a manner satisfac
tory to every reader (an impossible task, the attempted
^^Jack Williamson, "The Logic of Fantasy," in Of
Worlds Beyond: The Science of Science Fiction Writing, ed.
Lloyd Arthur Eschbach (Reading, Pennsylvania, 194?;
reprinted Chicago, 1964), pp. 39 ff.; Fletcher Pratt,
"Introduction" to his anthology, World of Wonder (New York,
1951), pp. 20-21.
^C. Robert Morse, "The Game of If," National
Review, May 3, 1958, pp. 427-428; and many other essays.
62
fulfillment of which would certainly be unreadable), we
would still not have freed ourselves unequivocally from the
taint of fantasy. Extrapolation, itself, is a kind of
fantasy, although disciplined by a mathematical or quasi-
mathematical sense of order. The further away you extrapo
late from the point of origin, and the more details you try
to extrapolate for your fictional world, the less probable
your prediction becomes, and the more you are likely to rely
27
on sources other than analysis and calculation. One of
these alternative sources is the unconscious. Another is
the body of motifs and conventions already in existence in
science fiction or science fictional speculation.
One result of the unconscious being loosed in a
science fictional work is that desires and fears which have
no necessary connection with what is objectively real or
probable may btcome determining factors in the story and in
its effect on the reader. If they are kept generally under
control, the work may be utopian or dystopian, at least in
terms of the author's attitude toward his narrative, often
28
in terms of the overall structure of his imaginary world.
27
For further discussion, see Year 2000 (above,
note 7), pp. 34-39.
28
The principles of utopia and dystopia as literary
forms, and their similarities, are most thoroughly examined
in Hubertus Schulte Herbriiggen, Utopie and Anti-Utopie:
Von der Strukturanalyse zur Strukturtypologie, in Beitrage
zur Englischen Philologie, 43 (Bochum-Langendreer, 1960)7
63
Without some kind of tight rational control, however,
science fiction can deteriorate into what Leslie Fiedler
sees it as to begin with, terror fiction: "Its writers
propagate, for instance, non-Aristotelian logic, engram
psychology, interracial (even interplanetary) tolerance,
and, of course, the general cause of science. Yet simul
taneously, they pander to fantasies of flight, dreams of
omnipotence--and, not least of all, the shameful pleasure
of imagining the stench of burning bodies, the acrid dust
of crumbling cities, the desolation of the man lost in
space, the anguish of the oppressed in totalitarian utopias
29
as yet unborn." It may be that an attempt to avoid such
an accusation is partly responsible for the notable lack of
emotion in science fiction, especially in its characters.
In its purest form, the product of the unconscious
tends toward the archetypes of myth, which, as Northrop Frye
has suggested, can be seen to form a coherent pattern of
imagery (at least in Western civilization). Viewed favor
ably, in terms of human desire, this pattern approximates an
apocalyptic world, similar to the heaven of religion; viewed
negatively, as rejected by desire, it becomes a demonic
world, similar to hell. Both worlds are essentially static,
but they exert an influence over the kind of fictional
worlds in which men act and narrative takes place. Less
29
Fiedler (above, note 15), p. 479. Similar charges
of fear-peddling and general pessimism are fairly common in
other essays.
64
rigidly metaphorical, these worlds involve progressive
rationalization of the mythic imagery, as they tend toward
realism. Thus we arrive at a fictional world of romance,
in which the central plot-form is the quest, in which
protagonist and antagonist tend to be respectively good and
bad, innocent and guilty, natural and unnatural, hero and
villain, and in which the supernatural (apocalyptic and
30
demonic) is never very far away. With some modification,
this could be the fictional world of science fiction, as in
fact Frye himself suggests at another point: "Science
fiction frequently tries to imagine what life would be like
on a plane as far above us as we are above savagery; its
setting is often of a kind that appears to us as technolog
ically miraculous. It is thus a mode of romance with a
31
strong inherent tendency to myth."
Like Frye's fictional worlds, the world of science
fiction is a system of conventions and motifs agreed upon by
a number of writers and readers. Although at bottom it is
founded on natural law and the goals and assumptions of
science, it is for the most part a set of fictional con
structs consciously fabricated, and subjected to scrutiny
and modification before becoming a part of this modern
30
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton,
1957), pp. 131-239. For an introduction to the modern form
of the prose romance, see Robert Scholes, The Fabulators
(New York, 1967).
^Frye, p. 49.
65
cosmology (Frye suggests a similar process, poetic rather
than scientific, was responsible for the medieval cosmol-
32
ogy). It is a new cosmology, which does not have the
accumulated resonances for the general reader that we asso
ciate with that old picture of the universe, although for
science fiction fans the resonances are strong enough for
the writer not to have to explain everything he introduces,
for him to assume knowledge of conflicting interpretations
of a science fictional projection, and for him to evoke and
invite comparisons of his work with others of a similar
nature or on a similar theme. It is a somewhat inconstant
cosmology, too, which may be disconcerting to some readers:
it has many levels and layers, in space and in time; it
allows for differing and even conflicting projections into
the same time and place; even its foundations are subject to
change, as scientists (and science fiction writers) adjust
the reigning theories and Mlaws" from time to time, and as
various projections come true in reality (differing greatly
in detail from many, if not all, predictions) or are ruled
out by actual happenings contradictory to them.
In addition to being a handy compendium of fantastic
motifs, conventions, and ideas, the science fictional
cosmology is also a genuine object of belief (which perhaps
strengthens the claims both of those who see it as myth and
■^Frye, pp. 160-161.
66
33
those who see it as delusion). Obviously, for the sake of
the story, writer and reader agree to suspend disbelief.
But there is also a genuine communal acceptance of some of
the basic principles making up the cosmology, regardless of
quibbling over details. Thus travel to the stars, the
existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, and
the desire of man to increase his knowledge and power are
rather firm articles of faith; slightly less firm is the
belief in the possibilities of robots, artificial life,
man's achieving some control over his combative instincts;
somewhat shaky beliefs, but acceptable conventions include
immortality, matter transmission, and the various kinds of
3 4
phenomena called "parapsychological." For the most part
this communal acceptance is rather on the level of what
Tolkien calls "literary belief," the acceptance of things
33
"As a type [science fiction] conforms to the
expression of a myth. This myth, not yet in wide acceptance
among the population at large, is that the mind of man is
capable of solving all problems directed to it by the exer
cise of logical thinking and through the logical disciplines
of orthodox science." Don Fabun, "Science Fiction in Motion
Pictures, Radio, and Television," in Modern Science Fiction:
Its Meaning and Its Future, ed. Reginald Bretnor (New York,
1953), pp. 46-47. See also Siegfried Mandel and Peter
Fingesten, "The Myth of Science Fiction," Saturday Review,
August 27, 1955, pp. 7-8, 24-25, 28, and Ednita P. Bernabev,
"Science Fiction: A New Mythos," Psychoanalytic Quarterly,
XXVI, 4 (1957), 527-535.
o /
See the expository treatment given these and other
motifs in Clarke (above, note 8).
67
35
as real within the fictional or Secondary World. But the
science fiction community also has its lunatic fringe, who
regard this Secondary World as better or realer than the
3 6
Primary World and seek to live within this new framework.
Such a communal acceptance, for all of its unfortu
nate by-products, may well have been necessary for science
fiction to maintain its identity in the twentieth century.
The general public and the main stream of literature
certainly don't seem to have had any interest in promulgat
ing science or propagandizing for the future in the Twenties
and Thirties, and even since World War II, the acceptance of
science fiction and its way of thinking has not been over
whelming. But whether the public's rejection caused the
descent into subliterature or vice versa, by the time of
World War I, fictional considerations of science and its
possibilities could be found almost only in literary
dystopias, warning of science's dangers, or in dime novels,
exploiting science for sensationalism.
At first glance, the conventions of dystopia, like
those of utopia, might seem rather well suited to the aims
of pure science fiction. The emphases on theory and logical
^J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," Tree and
Leaf (London, 1964), pp. 36-37.
O ( L
Case studies may be found in Martin Gardner, Fads
and Fallacies in the Name of Science, rev. ed. (New York^
1957), and Robert Lindner, "The Jet-Propelled Couch," The
Fifty-Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic
Tales (New York7 1961).
68
construction, on settings and customs more than on individ
ual people, on rational and generalized behavior in prefer
ence to personal and emotional idiosyncrasies, the relative
unimportance placed on developed characters, on plot and
action, on things as they are now, both positive and
37
negative utopias hold in common with science fiction. In
addition, writers of utopias and dystopias have often placed
their imaginary worlds in the future, have stressed their
realizability, and have admitted the importance of science.
But the stress on value judgments for or against these
imaginary worlds, the predominance of desire over likeli
hood, and the importance of rigid, authoritarian, unchanging
"perfection," such as would allow no scientific innovations
and admit of no problems to solve, are uncongenial to pure
38
science fiction. And the demand made by the traditional
utopian and dystopia on the reader, for intelligence,
perspective, a taste for social criticism and satire, and
the patience to endure lengthy and complex description and
exhortation, was not likely to attract a communal response,
whereas pulp fiction could, and did.
37
See Herbriiggen (above, note 27).
OO
This is not meant to imply that dystopian science
fiction cannot or does not exist. The contrary has been
established quite clearly in Kingsley Amis, New Maps of
Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (London, 1§61) , and in
Mark R. Hillegas, The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells and
the Anti-Utopians (New York, 1967). I merely wish to point
out the "impurity" of the form.
69
The average reader of Astounding Science Fiction,
according to the most recent poll conducted by John W.
Campbell, Jr., in 1957-58, is "about thirty years old, male,
a college graduate in one of the engineering sciences . . .
who's been reading Astounding since his Sophomore year in
39
college. ..." Fifty per cent identified their college
major as engineering or physical science; including biology,
medicine, mathematics, psychology, and social science, about
83 per cent could be called scientifically oriented. Fifty-
seven per cent had graduated from college, and an additional
16 per cent had gone beyond high school in their education;
over 80 per cent had read Astounding five years or more,
over 54 per cent more than ten years, over 33 per cent more
than fifteen years.^ Although Campbell's poll, and
Campbell's magazine, may not be fully representative of the
science fiction community, Isaac Asimov, in a 1963 article,
cited personal experience to support Campbell's findings of
a connection between science and science fiction, and his
suggestion that reading science fiction begins in
"^[John W. Campbell, Jr.], "Portrait of You,"
Astounding, May, 1958, p. 135. The poll, such as Campbell
has conducted before, was first announced in the June, 1957
issue, p. 138. The accuracy of the poll is open to ques
tion, since it was totally voluntary in nature (the ques
tions and their categorized answers were given in a coupon
printed in the magazine). The reliability of inferences
from the data is also questionable, since the total number
of respondents was not given.
^"Portrait, " pp. 135-136.
70
adolescence.^^ These factors suggest the necessity, in
keeping the science fiction community together, of satisfy
ing the adolescent's thirst for adventure as well as the
scientist's interest in speculation. Other factors, such as
educational background and length of readership, suggest an
audience of some sophistication, at least as far as science
and science fiction are concerned, if not in literature and
the humanities as a whole.
If, then, science fiction is mainly "a relaxation
literature for the amusement of technically minded people,"
as Campbell states elsewhere, we can expect it to use
fictional techniques aimed more at keeping the story going
/ 2
than at providing new kinds of artistic insight. Not a
popular medium in the sense of having a vast, general audi
ence, the pulp magazines are nevertheless dependent on, and
responsive to a mass public of a specialized kind. In order
to maintain that readership, they must merchandise a product
which is fairly stable not only in its outlook, but also in
^Isaac Asimov, "The Sword of Achilles," Is Anyone
There? (Garden City, 1967), p. 300.
^John W. Campbell, Jr., "The Value of Science
Fiction," in Science Marches On, ed. James Stokley (New
York, 1951), p. 445. Science fiction as a whole is almost
untouched by the "experiments" in form and technique which
fiction has seen in the twentieth century. But then science
fiction writers would generally fit the category of "contem
poraries" rather than that of "moderns" in Stephen Spender,
The Struggle of the Modern (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965),
pp. 71-787
71
/ Q
its form. In order to preserve this stability, popular
literature frequently resorts to formulas, stereotypes,
oversimplifications, and a general conformism; such conven
tions and prejudices can be found in science fiction,
although they may not fully agree with those of the general
public.^ Hypothetical futures can easily become escapist
wonderlands, problem-solving stories become exercises in
consistently victorious adventure, and the scientist-hero
becomes an always resourceful superman, vague enough for the
adolescent in all of us to identify with and specific enough
to award the scientist or technician special recognition.
The adventure might not be as likely as the setting, the
temporary ego-gratification might not help the reader under
stand the real world and his society, and the afficionado
might find rather rare a really new idea that was titillat
ing in its freshness and exciting in terms of the vistas
and perspectives it opened up. But by not taking science
fiction seriously as literature, people could read it as
entertainment; the short episodes, sketchy motivation,
/ Q
"This [statement by Vladimir Nabokov regarding the
advisability of the artist's ignoring his audience] is not
an extreme point of view; we have all encountered it. But
if this is art, if this is literature, science fiction could
afford to be literature . . . [sic] for its very essence is
communication of a variety of ideas to a variety of people.
And it has to lure them into coming to listen." P. Schuyler
Miller, "The Reference Library," Analog, February, 1964,
p. 92.
^Contrast O'Hara (above, note 15) and Hirsch
(above, note 9).
72
skimpy characterization, simplistic explanations, and flat
cliche-ridden language in description and dialogue would
make none of literature's "unreasonable" demands on the
reader's full attention, and the content, mainly projections
of science and technology into man's future, could be given
a fairly wide circulation.
Whether or not a communal relationship between
readers, writers, and editors actually was necessary for
the preservation of science fiction, a fusion of science
fictional ideas and pulp literary format did take place, and
a highly specialized market of commercial fiction has kept
its product within reasonable proximity of the ideals of
pure science fiction. There is a definite family resem
blance between the magazines (and their contents) of the
Twenties and early Thirties and those of today, the late
Sixties. This is due in large part to the continued regard
for the principles we have just examined: the shared
assumptions of science and conventions of science fiction
which make up the modern cosmology; the shared desire for
adventure, fantasy, and knowledge about the unknown which
motivates the stories; and the shared techniques and
conventions of pulp fiction which dominate the medium of
popular communication. These similarities and their differ
ences from the accepted norms of great literature are so
pronounced that critics may well feel themselves justified
in assuming an overall homogeneity throughout pulp science
73
fiction, whereby an observation based on a few examples will
45
hold true for the entire field.
The homogeneity of science fiction, however, is more
apparent to the outside observer than it is to the habitual
reader, for all that the latter gravitates toward his favor
ite reading because it is in fact of a certain kind. Within
this general sameness there is a good deal of variety, some
of which has already been suggested, by the chronological
division of "physical," "social," and "psychological"
science fiction, and by the fact that the five leading pulp
magazines today each tend to specialize in a different
46
approach to science fiction. A tolerance for diversity in
the science fiction community is indicated by a number of
other signs as well. Within the pages of these magazines,
controversy is not avoided, but welcomed; practically any
and all of the accepted conventions of science fiction
mentioned above are fair game for attack, including the
desire for adventure and wonder and the literary form and
style, and not only in letters and editorials, but in the
fiction itself as well. The critical literature, produced
from within the community, never shied away from controversy
in the fanzines, and does not now that it has attained book
^Many critical articles on science fiction seem to
be based on just such a "select" sampling. Their contra
dictory conclusions suggest the inadequacy of the selec
tions .
46
See above, Chapter I, pp. 21-37.
74
publication either,^ And the "Hugo" awards, given annually
at the World Science Fiction Convention since 1953 (except
ing 1954), also indicate an allowance for variety. In
fifteen years, each of the five leading magazines (Analog,
F&SF, Galaxy, IF, New Worlds) has received at least one
48
"Hugo." Winning novels have included the literarily
49
sensitive and the science fictionally conventional. In
some cases, awards have been given despite widespread
reservations about the author's philosophy
Variations in quality are also noticeable, and
almost every regular reader of science fiction must have
his list of the best writers and books in the field.
P. Schuyler Miller, whose book review column has appeared
in Astounding/Analog since October, 1951, has invited
See especially Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder:
Essays on Modern Science Fiction, rev. ed". (Chicago, 1967) ,
and William Atheling, Jr. [James’ Blish], The Issue at Hand:
Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction, ed. James
Blish (Chicago, 1964).
48
According to sources given above (Chapter I, note
37), Astounding/Analog has six wins (1955, 1956, 1961, 1962,
1964, 1965) ana two ties (1953, 1957); F&SF has four wins
(1958, 1959, 1960, 1963); IF has three wins (1966, 1967,
1968); Galaxy (1953) and New Worlds (1957) each tied once.
49
Examples of each include, respectively, A Canticle
for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., winner of the 1961
award, and Way Station by Clifford Simak, winner of the 1964
award.
■^Two of Robert A. Heinlein's four awards for best
novel were for controversial books: Starship Troopers,
winner of the 1960 award, and Stranger m a Strange Land,
winner of the 1962 award.
75
reader response three times (1952, 1956, 1966) in order to
compile consensus lists of the (28, 26, and 27, respec-
51
tively) "best" books in science fiction. For the 1961
Modern Language Association Conference on Science Fiction,
Mark Hillegas proposed a list, agreed upon by members of the
Conference, of 108 books of at least historical interest,
52
dating back to 1607 A.D. Of the more recent entries in
the MLA list, twelve titles agree with both Miller's 1956
and 1966 lists, and another nine agree with either the 1956
or the 1966 list (which were cut off arbitrarily at a
certain standing in terms of total votes received for a
53
particular book). The MLA list included three of the
seven "Hugo" winners up to that time, and the 1966 Analog
P. Schuyler Miller, "The Reference Library,"
Astounding, January, 1953; Astounding, October, 1956;
Analog, November, 1966.
^Mark R. Hillegas, "A Draft of the Science-Fiction
Canon to be proposed at the 1961 MLA Conference on Science
Fiction," Extrapolation, III (December, 1961), 26-30.
53
One of the twelve is an anthology, Adventures in
Time and Space, ed. Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis MeComas
(1946). The other eleven follow in alphabetical order by
author: Isaac Asimov, Foundation (1952) and I, Robot
(1951); Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man (1953); Ray
Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1950); Arthur C. Clarke,
Childhood's End (1953); Hal Clement, Mission of Gravity
(1953) ; Robert A. Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon
(1950); Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, The Space
Merchants (1953); Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human (1953);
A. E. Van Vogt, Sian (1940) and The World of Null-A (1945).
Three volumes listed by both Hillegas and Miller 1966 were
not published in time for Miller 1956: Isaac Asimov, The
Caves of Steel (1954); Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for
Leibowitz (1959); John Wyndham, Re-Birth (1955j^
76
list included six of the fourteen novels awarded a "Hugo”
r /
up to that time. Thus it can be seen that there is some
general agreement about what the best works of science
55
fiction are.
There is, however, a considerable amount of dispute
about what makes a work of science fiction good. What might
amount to literary excellence in the eyes of many discerning
readers--a sense of style, a feeling for language, intelli
gent dialogue, emotional conviction, human characters
involved in honest interpersonal relationships, a wealth of
detail enforcing a sense of reality--many science fiction
fans find unnecessary, disconcerting, even a kind of camou
flage for an author's having nothing to say. What they
seem to want first is that which only science fiction has
to offer (novelty, suggestive speculation, scientific accu
racy) , secondly that which it has in common with other kinds
of popular literature (adventure, excitement, entertainment,
Hillegas: Bester, W. Miller (above, note 52),
and James Blish, A Case of Conscience (1958). Miller 1966:
Bester, W. Miller (above, note 52), two books by Heinlein
(above, note 49), Simak (above, note 48), and Frank Herbert,
Dune (1965).
■^Miller's 1952 poll, based on only 41 ballots,
appeared before many of the best books on the other compila
tions; five of its titles agree with Miller 1956 and 1966;
nine of the 1952 titles agree with Hillegas. A small poll
of British readers, conducted by a Scottish science fiction
magazine, Nebula, in February, 1959, correlates with others
as follows! Miller 1956, 11; Miller 1966, 11; Hillegas, 9;
Miller 1956 and 1966, 9; Miller 1956 and 1966 and Hillegas,
7. The Nebula poll was reported by Miller in Astounding,
October, 1959.
77
in a word, "story-telling"), and next, whatever craftsman
ship is needed to cement the two into a workable construe-
c / :
tion. Both groups of readers, I suspect, are in favor of
intellectual honesty, philosophical significance, and
aesthetic integrity, but they mean rather different things
by those phrases.
Thus, as in recent years, the marriage between
science fiction and mainstream literature has come to seem
more and more imminent, there has been some controversy
over the likely watering down of the science fictional
57
ideal. Ironically, the very success of pulp science
fiction brought in enough competition to endanger finan
cially the independent existence of the pulp base of
operations. The spread of science fiction into other
communications and entertainment media and the conversion of
science fictions into historical actualities has opened up,
in turn, a wider audience and more lucrative, less special
ized markets for something called science fiction. But
C fi
Thus the three most popular authors in Miller’s
1966 poll (measured by a separate vote and tabulation), the
only ones named by over half of the 441 respondents, were
Asimov (80.4 per cent), Heinlein (80.0 per cent), and Clarke
(66.9 per cent), the works of whom fit the latter descrip
tion well, but not the former. Analog, November, 1966.
■^Knight (above, note 46), pp. 277-283 and passim;
Algis Budrys, "Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy (since February,
1965), especially August, 1966, December, 1966, and October,
1968. Others regret the passing of the "Golden Age" of the
Thirties; see especially Moskowitz (above, note 16), pp.
347-350, and Alva Rogers, A Requiem for "Astounding"
(Chicago, 1964).
78
reaching a more generalized audience could result in a loss
of contact with science and extrapolation, since the general
public (and the literary critics) will frequently accept as
science fiction anything making use of a single device,
convention, or gimmick borrowed from or resembling science
fiction in its pure state.
Thus the theoretical modification we considered to
be begun with the adaptation of pure science fiction to
imaginative literature, and continued with the adaptation to
the pulp fiction magazines, leads further to still another
attenuation of the science fictional base, so that at least
two definitions are necessary for dealing with science
fiction as a literary form or genre. Historically, we have
seen it as a general tendency in literature through the
ages, and as an essentially commercial product of popular
magazines catering to a specialized taste. Fundamentally,
we have seen it as fictionalized scientific speculation,
each extrapolation or projection being itself an individual
"science fiction." Formally, then, we can build on that
foundation to construct a definition applicable to that work
which most closely approximates the ideal: imaginative
literature based on extrapolation from contemporary reality,
consistent with contemporary scientific assumptions and
theory. In such a formulation, "imaginative literature"
means stories, plays, and poems concerned with hypothetical
settings, events, and/or characters, "extrapolation" means
79
logical and chronological extension, and the "scientific
assumptions and theory" tend toward the "scientistic" postu
lates described above. A more general definition, inclusive
rather than exclusive, can be formed by expanding this one
with additional qualifiers (in parentheses): imaginative
literature based (at least in part) on extrapolation from
present (past, future, or un-) reality, consistent with
scientific (quasi-scientific, para-scientific, or pseudo
scientific) assumptions and theory of the present (past, or
future, in this or a hypothetical parallel dimension or
"time -track") .
The latter definition, allowing for the inclusion of
almost any sort of utopia, marvelous journey, or detailed
and consistent fantasy, seems to be the one in general use
today, both inside and outside the science fiction commu
nity. Inside, despite the theoretical allegiance to science
(or perhaps because of the security of that allegiance),
there is a good deal of experimentation being undertaken as
if to see how far the definition can be extended. Outside,
where there is no apparent concern for science fictional
purity, the guardians of public taste emphasize and encour
age literary form, style, and technique, even at the expense
of specifically science fictional values.
The problem is not so much that the critics would
like to clean up the more subliterary features of science
fiction, as that they may not distinguish between those
80
features and the more or less defining characteristics of
the genre. Even if a critic does not have a definite philo
sophical bias against science, technology, and scientism as
potential or actual oppressors of the human spirit, he may,
by asking that science fiction become more literary, be
asking that it stop being science fiction. If a writer
becomes too subjectively involved with his characters, mak
ing them more specific, individual, emotionally motivated,
i.e. human, stressing felt life over theory, he is saying in
effect that man, not science, is the measure. If he puts
more stress on aesthetic construction of stories and
sentences, he may be accepting the implicit dicta that a
love of words is more important than a love of ideas, that
experimentation is permissible with literary form but not
with people and concepts, and that literary belief (a prod
uct of literary technique) is more significant than actual
belief in the possibility that a prediction or projection
might come true.
It may be that a compromise will be reached, whereby
neither literary nor science fictional considerations must
be slighted, along the lines of the "integrated” literature
forecast by Bretnor, but it should be a true compromise,
involving not only the appreciation of literary technique
and values by readers, writers, and critics presently inside
the science fiction community, but also the scientific
81
58
education of readers, writers, and critics outside.
Although the genius who can make great literature out of
science fiction cannot be planned for, the outsider can
learn to accept science fiction conventions, and the insider
can learn to accept an optimum level of literacy. To some
extent, both have already done so since 1945 and, if Judith
Merril can be believed, the rapprochement is almost upon
59
us. The evidence is fairly skimpy, however, and mostly
concentrated in the shorter forms of prose fiction, where a
single science fiction can support a story, or a fantasy
can be given a semi-scientific twist (as Ray Bradbury
discovered even before 1945).^ The real test, I believe,
is in the novel, where people and life, as well as ideas
and technology, must be dealt with, and there the compromise
is not yet a reality.
A number of respectable novels, however, or books of
novel length, honest and intelligent, solid and craftsman
like, have emerged from the pulp field since World War II.
CO
Reginald Bretnor, "The Future of Science Fiction,"
in Bretnor (above, note 32), pp. 265-294.
■^Judith Merril, "What Do You Mean--Science?/
Fiction?" Extrapolation, VII (May, 1966), 30-46, VIII
(December, 1966), 2-19; The Year's Best S-F, 7th-llth Annual
Editions (New York, 1962-66); book reviews, F&SF, monthly
(with a few exceptions) since March, 1965.
60
Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of
Modern Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966),
pp. 335-3'6T:---------
82
Of these I have chosen six, as relatively representative of
what has been written over the last twenty years, to subject
to close, critical examination. They are: Childhood's End
(1953) by Arthur C. Clarke; The Caves of Steel (1953) by
Isaac Asimov; More than Human (1953) by Theodore Sturgeon;
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) by Walter M. Miller, Jr.;
Rogue Moon (1960) by Algis Budrys; and The Crystal World
(1966) by J. G. Ballard. Three of these authors (Clarke,
Asimov, Sturgeon) began writing science fiction in the late
Thirties and early Forties, in the age of "social" science
fiction, two (Miller, Budrys) began in the Fifties, when the
pulp writers began to be noticed outside the science fiction
community, and one (Ballard) began in the Sixties, writing
mainly for New Worlds which stressed "psychological" science
fiction. The ratio of British to American writers is one to
two (Clarke and Ballard are British), somewhat higher than
the actual ratio in the magazines; two of the six writers
(Sturgeon, Ballard) are noted more for fantasy than
"possible" science fiction, also a somewhat higher percent
age than actually obtains in the field. Each of the books
studied has at its base at least one major theme or motif
which the others do not, and which is fairly commonly used
in science fiction; each is written in a form and with a
style which, although distinctive enough to identify the
author, have also been used or approximated by other pulp
writers. From a thematic, formal, and stylistic analysis of
83
these six books, then, it should be possible to show both
the underlying similarities which make them science fiction,
and the level of artistic achievement which has been reached
by certain individuals, and thus by the field in general.
CHAPTER III
ARTHUR C. CLARKE: CHILDHOOD'S END
Accepting UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for the populariza
tion of science in 1962, Arthur C. Clarke, author of more
than thirty books of science fiction and non-fiction,
eulogized science fiction in his acceptance speech, as the
following excerpts show:
I would claim that the percentage of competent writ
ing in the science fiction field is probably higher
than in any other. This is because much of it is a
labour of love, written by enthusiasts who have
considerable scientific knowledge and who are them
selves practicing scientists. . . .
Though it often serves to impart information, I
think its chief value is inspirational. . . .
In spreading the ideas of spaceflight [sic],
science fiction has undoubtedly helped to change the
world. More generally, it helps us to face the
strange realities of the universe in which we
live....
Anyone who reads this form of literature quickly
realizes the absurdity of man's present tribal divi
sions. Science fiction encourages the cosmic view
point; perhaps this is why it is not popular among
those literary pundits who have never quite accepted
the Copernican revolution, nor grown used to the
fact [sic] that man may not be the highest form of
life in the universe....
It Is, pre-eminently, the literature of change--
and change is the only thing of which we can be
certain today. . . .
84
85
Science fiction . . . assumes that the future
will be profoundly different from the past--though
it does not, as is often imagined, attempt to
predict that future in detail. . . .
But by mapping out possible futures, as well as
a good many impossible ones, tTTe science fiction
writer can do a great service to the community.
He encourages in his readers flexibility of mind,
readiness to accept and even welcome changes--in one
word, adaptability.^
Although he purports to be describing science
fiction in general, and he follows the affirmative arguments
generally accepted within the science fiction community, his
comments have particular relevance to his own work. An
"enthusiast" of science fiction since at age ten he discov
ered Amazing Stories, Clarke himself has "considerable
scientific knowledge" and apparently writes science fiction
as "a labour of love" since there is more money in writing
popular science. A radar instructor with the Royal Air
Force in World War II, he holds a Bachelor of Science degree
from the University of London (1948), has been chairman of
the British Interplanetary Society, and has done a great
deal of oceanographic research in and around Ceylon, his
2
adopted homeland.
■^Arthur C. Clarke, "Kalinga Award Speech," Voices
from the Sky: Previews of the Coming Space Age (New York,
1967) 7" pp". 139' -143'.---------- --------------------------------- --------------
2
For biographical data on Clarke, see Godfrey Smith,
"Astounding Story: About a Science Fiction Writer," New
York Times Magazine, March 6, 1966, pp. 28, 75-77, anH
sketches in Contemporary Authors, IV (1963) , and Current
Biography, October, 1%6.
86
In both his fiction and his non-fiction, Clarke
brings his readers face to face with "the strange realities
of the universe in which we live," with particular emphasis
on space, time, and the sea. His short stories include the
whimsical fantasy of Tales from the White Hart (1957) as
well as the straight science fiction collected in Expedition
to Earth (1953) , Reach for Tomorrow (1956), The Other Side
of the Sky (1958), and Tales from Ten Worlds (1962). His
novels of the near future are soberly speculative, The Deep
Range (1957) and Dolphin Island (1963) dealing with life in
the sea, the others with the exploration of space. From the
first moon-rocket described in Prelude to Space (1951),
through the space stations of Islands in the Sky (1953), to
the moon in A Fall of Moondust (1961), to Mars in The Sands
of Mars (1951) , and to the near planets in general in
Earthlight (1951, expanded 1955), he guides us through man's
expansion of his technological progress and territorial
domain.
In three other novels, however, Clarke is less
soberly scientific, more concerned with eschatological
fantasy, as he considers possible destinies for man, the
prediction of which can hardly be dated, although they can
be seen as logical extensions of certain lines of thought.
The first, Against the Fall of Night (1948, revised as The
City and the Stars, 1956), is a tale of the far future on
Earth, in which an adolescent succeeds in reawakening the
87
static civilization of an "immortal" city. The technology
is conceivable, the psychology is romantically childish, and
the style and tone, especially in the revised version, are
far more periodic and mellifluous, poetic and dreamlike,
than his usual modified journalese. The latest, 2001:
A Space Odyssey (1968), expanded from a short story into a
novel and a working script for the film of the same name,
carries man's space exploration out to Saturn (Jupiter in
the film). Concerned ostensibly with man's outward urge
and his contact with monuments of intelligent, extra
terrestrial life forms, the book (like the movie) ends on a
note of intense introspection. The third, Childhood's End
(1953), is usually regarded as his greatest achievement in
science fiction.
Immediately upon publication, Childhood's End
received praise both inside and outside the science fiction
community. James J. Rollo wrote in The Atlantic Monthly
that the book was a "stimulating . . . novel of ideas . . .
3
crisply written . . . far from frivolous." William Du Bois
in the New York Times called it "a first-rate tour de force
that is well worth the attention of every thoughtful citizen
in this age of anxiety."^ Basil Davenport's enthusiasm
prompted this statement in the New York Times Book Review:
3
Review by James J. Rollo, The Atlantic Monthly,
November 1953, p. 112.
4
Review by William Du Bois, New York Times, August
27, 1953, p. 23.
88
"In 'Childhood's End' [sic] Arthur C. Clarke joins Olaf
Stapledon, C. S. Lewis, and probably one should add H. G.
Wells, in the very small group of writers who have used
science fiction as the vehicle of philosophical ideas--not
merely about the nature of future society, but ideas about
the End of Man."^ Soon after its publication, Childhood's
End was cited by such critics as J. Donald Adams and Gilbert
Highet as an example of the best that science fiction had to
offer, a best good enough to make them recant earlier
£
derogatory statements about science fiction in general.
Less surprised, perhaps, most science fiction reviewers
found it "impressive" and "ambitious" but cripplingly
disjointed.^ Damon Knight wrote that it typified Clarke's
virtues and flaws as a writer, and he excused some of the
latter on the basis of the chronicle form, in which Time,
g
rather than human beings, is rightfully the protagonist.
^Review by Basil Davenport, New York Times Book
Review, August 23, 1953, p. 19.
^J. Donald Adams, "Speaking of Books," New York
Times Book Review, July 12, 1953, p. 2, and September 13,
1953, p. 2. Gilbert Highet, "From World to World," People,
Places, and Books (New York, 1953), pp. 130-137, and
"Perchance to Dream," A Clerk of Oxenford (New York, 1954),
pp. 3-10.
^Reviews by Groff Conklin, Galaxy, March, 1954, pp.
118-119, H. H. Holmes [William Anthony White, editor of F&SF
as "Anthony Boucher"], New York Herald-Tribune Book Review,
August 22, 1953, p. 9, and P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding,
February, 1954, pp. 51-52.
Q
Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder: Essays on
Modern Science Fiction, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1967), pp. T87-
TZE~.
89
The passage of time, I suspect, has proven the more reserved
opinions right. Childhood's End is an ambitious effort,
better than people outside the science fiction community
thought the pulp field capable of producing, but it is also
an abortive effort, an impressive failure the flaws of which
are indicative of the problems frequently present in science
fiction as literature.
A novel of 75,000 words, Childhood1s End portrays a
series of fictional events taking place during the next 150
years and culminating in the metamorphosis of man into a
9
composite entity incomprehensible to the rational mind. In
three titled sections, roughly equal in length, Clarke
attempts to balance panoramic scope and human involvement by
means of alternating portions of generalized chronicle with
a loose series of episodes involving the reactions of a
half-dozen persons to the changes occurring around them.
Much of the narrative involves the relationships between
these humans and the extra-terrestrial beings who exercise a
benevolent dictatorship on Earth in order to see that the
metamorphosis is not prevented from taking place.
Following a brief prologue placing the aliens 1
arrival on the eve of man's first moon-rocket, Part One,
"Earth and the Over-Lords," recounts the establishment of
^Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood1s End (1953), in Across
the Sea of Stars (New York, 1959), pp. 249-434. Page
numbers in the text will refer to this edition.
90
peace on Earth during the aliens' first fifty years of rule.
A slightly revised version of the novelette "Guardian
Angel," this section focuses on the relationship between
Stormgren, Secretary-General of the United Nations, and
Karellen, the Overlords' Supervisor for Earth, and consists
mainly of two melodramatic episodes, Stormgren's abduction
by gangsters and his attempt to discover what Karellen looks
like.10
Part Two, "Earth and the Overlords," begins with the
descent of Karellen to Earth, and the revelation, after
fifty years of rule, that the Overlords literally look like
the Devil. In the Golden Age that they have instituted,
life has become a bit static, as we see from the description
of a rather dull party which serves mainly to foreshadow
coming events and to introduce us to the characters whose
part in these events will be described. The remainder of
the section follows Jan Rodricks through the steps of an
elaborate subterfuge by means of which he manages to stow
away on a starship bound for the Overlords' home planet.
Part Two closes with Karellen's announcement of Rodricks'
accomplishment and the regretful proclamation that "the
stars are not for Man" (p. 362).
^Reference to this novelette is made in Knight,
p. 187, and Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of
Modern Science Fiction (New York, 1966), p. 386, and it is
identified by the Day Index as having appeared in Famous
Fantastic Mysteries, April, 1950, and in New Worlds, Winter,
1950, but I have not been able to locate a copy ofeither
magazine.
91
Part Three, "The Last Generation," begins with
George and Jean Greggson, at a "utopian" artists' colony,
where their children become the first to show the signs of
those "extra-sensory" powers which the Overlords know to be
the first stage of metamorphosis. The Overlords, who now
reveal their real mission, take all the children to a single
place where they can grow, together, in their own way, while
the adults seek to accept their own obsolescence. When Jan
Rodricks returns, having seen some of the wonders of the
Universe, he finds himself the last man living, able to do
no more than observe the end of the world, and report it to
Karellen, who has already left on another mission. The
children depart, the Earth disintegrates, and Karellen is
last seen meditating on his race's solemn loneliness.
Giants of individual will and intellect, they are trapped in
an evolutionary cul de sac; never to share in or even to
understand the "Overmind" of which the children have become
a part, the Overlords can merely observe its ways and do its
bidding.
From the moon-bound rockets of the Prologue to the
last stage of the metamorphosis of man, familiar science
fictional motifs guide us gradually, if jerkily, from
predictable technological advances to prophetic eschatolog-
ical fantasy. Besides futuristic hardware, we are shown
three rational utopian societies and occasional glimpses of
mysterious extra-sensory powers. Dwarfing these
92
conceptions, however, and reducing them practically to the
status of leitmotifs, is the theme of alien contact,
expanded to include something close enough to being infi
nite, eternal, and unknowable that it could be called God.
Yet even this being, the Overmind, is rationalized, and
assumed to be subject to natural laws, however difficult,
even impossible, it may be for the individual intellect,
using science as a tool, ever to know those laws.
Compared with other novels by Clarke, Childhood's
End somewhat de-emphasizes technology; there is nothing like
the sober detail of his near future settings or the imagina
tive reach of The City and the Stars, although we are
presented with two cultural stages technologically advanced
over our own. The first, achieved by man as of about 2050
A.D., is said to consist mainly in "a completely reliable
oral contraceptive ... an equally infallible method . . .
of identifying the father of any child . . . [and] the per
fection of air transport" (p. 307). Other advances, varying
in seriousness and significance, include a mechanized ouija
board, a complete catalogue of the stars, "telecaster"
newspapers, elaborate undersea laboratories, plastic "taxi
dermy," and central community kitchens offering five-minute
service to any home. Far more advanced is the technology
of the Overlords; their gadgets include non-injurious pain
projectors, three-dimensional image projectors, cameraless
television capable of penetrating the past as well as
93
distances in the present, interstellar spaceships, and
vehicles which can move swiftly without the feeling of
acceleration. The extent of the Overlords' power is further
indicated by the fact that they have completely transformed
the atmosphere and gravity of their adopted home planet.
These advances may seem far removed from present-day experi
ence, but they are not incomprehensible as possible develop
ments from the thinking processes encouraged by "scientific"
Western Civilization, and all of them have been hypothesized
as human achievements by Clarke's predecessors and contempo
raries in pulp science fiction. In this book, none of these
developments is treated in any detail, and together they
amount to no more than a suggestive sketch, serving as the
merest foundation for the hypotheses built up from and
around them.
Technology alone does not create the utopian social
organizations described in Childhood's End, although without
it they might not exist. The law and order established by
the Overlords' effective use of technology, and the freedom
of movement and sexuality made possible by human inventions,
are necessary for the establishment of "the Golden Age" on a
worldwide scale. The elimination of real suffering and
anguish, however, seems to require at least a reduction in
excitement and other sought-after emotions. Combined with
the sense of inferiority engendered by the very existence of
the supremely rational and apparently unemotional Overlords,
94
these changes seem to result in a condition of generalized
anxiety, mild resentment, and bored lethargy, at least in
the characters we meet. One effort to overcome these nega
tive reactions is the establishment of an artists 1 colony,
with the traditionally utopian locale of an island, called
New Athens, but here too Clarke displays his ambivalence
towards utopia. Although the Overlords encourage the
colony's activities, even making occasional visits, only a
vague sense of civic pride can make any of the colonists
regard this attention as praise, for none of them seems to
be able to create anything of real value. Whether Clarke
could imagine something in the way of "predictable" great
art is irrelevant, since the artists' failure, due perhaps
to too much ease and to a sense of futility, serves to
underscore the utopian community's insignificance in the
larger context; from the Overlords' standpoint, New Athens
is a gathering-point for the most gifted children, an
arrangement convenient for the aliens' observation of the
early stages of the metamorphosis. Besides being unimpor
tant, Clarke suggests, utopia is unreachable; just as
technology, even effectively used, does not make everyone
happy on Earth, so it is also insufficient for the supremely
rational and scientific Overlords. What glimpses we are
given of their society indicate a sense of placid orderli
ness, presumably more pleasant to them than to the fright
ened observer, Jan, and their long lives and abilities may
95
tend to excite our envy. But the Overlords in turn envy man
and the other species which can commune with and become part
of the Overmind; indeed, a large part of the melancholy mood
Clarke associates with the Overlords seems due to their
longing for such a loss of individuality, amid certain
knowledge that they can never achieve it.
Clarke's ambivalence towards utopia, however, does
not make Childhood1s End a dystopia, as Mark Hillegas
claims.^ Utopia and dystopia alike require strong value
judgments as to the desirability of certain social institu
tions, and Clarke deliberately bypasses all such judgments
except one. His commitment to scientific thought and tech
nological advance is visible throughout the novel. On the
social level, he suggests, in traditional science fictional
fashion, the indifference of technological progress to man's
use of it for good or bad. On the level of speculative
biology, his hypothesis of a predestined metamorphosis of
the human race reminds us of the indifference of nature to
man's approval or disapproval of her workings, and of the
concern of science for those processes alone, not for their
value. On the symbolic level, to be sure, indifference is
replaced by anticipation; the coming of this "heavenly"
destiny parallels the soul's return to God, and the
11
Mark R. Hillegas, "Dystopian Science Fiction: New
Index to the Human Situation," New Mexico Quarterly, XXXI, 3
(Autumn, 1961), 238-249, revised for The Future as Night
mare: H. G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians (New York, 1967).
96
acceptance of this fate parallels utopianism, not dystopi-
anism, on the level of earthly accomplishment. Even on this
level, however, the commitment to science and rationality is
not completely abandoned, for these "human" activities will
be carried on by the Overlords, and Clarke seems more in
sympathy with them than with their superior, the Overmind.
The idea that man "may not be the highest form of
life in the Universe" is hardly original with Clarke; alien
beings have roamed the pages of science fiction at least
since Wells. Clarke's biggest debt, in this respect, is to
Olaf Stapledon, whose catalogue-like novels have served many
writers as references. Stapledon's Last and First Men
(1930) chronicles several metamorphoses in the future
history of man and his Star Maker (1937) is essentially a
dream-journey through the universe, conducted for the
narrator by a "being" similar to Clarke's Overmind. Where
Stapledon catalogues interminably, however, making no
concessions to artistic form, Clarke has tried to isolate a
few Stapledonian concepts, to make them meaningful on a
simple, human level, and to make a rounded story out of the
whole.
The affinity of science fiction with what Northrop
Frye calls the apocalyptic and demonic imagery of mythology
12
is quite explicit in Childhood's End. Utopian fiction
12
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton,
1957), pp. 141-150.
97
frequently makes use of analogies with the Heaven of Chris
tianity (despite the fact that the basic utopian premise of
the perfectibility of man is a Christian heresy), and the
similarities between dystopia and Hell are seldom ignored.
In science fiction, even with the most scrupulous attempts
at neutrality, any institution the reader favors in an
imaginary society is likely to evoke comparisons with utopia
and Heaven, any bad one with dystopia and Hell. In similar
fashion, any superior aliens will probably evoke reminis
cences of supernatural beings, benevolence being attributed
to gods, malevolence to devils (or evil gods). This situa
tion is complicated by the traditional association in
Western literature of science, scientists, and "forbidden"
knowledge with the supernatural representatives of evil, and
by the reversal of values frequently seen since the Romantic
period, whereby the writer opts for the position and direc
tion of the Evil One in preference to the "oppressive" God
13
of Judeo-Christian tradition. It seems to me that Clarke
deliberately chooses devil-figures as spokesmen for scien
tific thought in order to establish an increasing tension
13
The idea of knowledge as a debasing force goes
back at least to the legends of Pandora and the Garden of
Eden; the Faust legend and its predecessors are examined
in E[liza] M[arian] Butler, The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge
and New York, 1948) and in Charles Dedeyan, Le Th'feme de
Faust dans la litterature europeene, 4 vols. (Paris, 1954-
1962). The Romantic inversion of the respective values of
God and Satan is seen in Blake, Byron, Lermontov, and many
others, a recent example being J. B., by Archibald MacLeish.
98
between conflicting emotions as the climax of the novel
approaches. Despite the overwhelming superiority of the
Overmind, over man and Overlord alike, Clarke knows that he
can rely on the science fiction reader's sympathy for the
"losing" forces of rationality.
The few human characters with whom we have any
chance to identify all side with the rational "scientific"
kind of thought which Clarke, like many science fiction
writers, seems to regard as man's greatest achievement.
Stormgren resists the fear of some people that the as yet
unseen Overlords may be that hoariest of science fiction
cliches, B.E.M.'s (Bug-Eyed Monsters, whose intelligence is
practically nil, sometimes despite their technological
achievements, and who existed in early pulp science fiction
primarily in order to kidnap luscious maidens for sinister
purposes, only to be foiled by the hero in the nick of
time). Reflecting on Karellen's refusal to show himself,
Stormgren muses on the absurdity of man's superstitions,
illustrating the more recent science fictional position
regarding intelligent extra-terrestrial life forms, as he
observes that, no matter how alien the form of life, "the
mind, not the body, was all that mattered" (p. 268). George
Greggson is a little less sure of himself but, when his son
Jeff begins to have strange dreams, apparently of distant
worlds, George confides in the Overlord Rashaverak, "I've
never believed in the supernatural; I'm no scientist, but I
99
think there's a rational explanation for everything," to
which Rashaverak replies, "There is" (p. 395). Jan
Rodricks, during his stay on the Overlords' planet, also
retains his faith in reason, although he may not find it
capable of controlling his emotions in the face of the
unknown. As Clarke puts it: "Even Jan, for all his
curiosity and scientific detachment, sometimes found himself
on the verge of unreasoning terror. The absence of a single
familiar reference point can be utterly unnerving even to
the coolest and clearest minds" (p. 413). The application
of science, i.e. technology, is represented by two helpers,
Duval, who fashions the spy apparatus which Stormgren uses
in his attempt to uncover Karellen's secret, and Sullivan,
who builds the plastic model of a whale and giant squid in
combat which, as a museum shipment, enables Rodricks to stow
away on the starship. Each is seen only in relation to his
own research and to the craftsmanship which helps others
undertake their own "research."
The supreme representatives of reason, and of
science, are the Overlords, who are thinkers and observers,
and also in their role of guardians, manipulators and
experimenters. Their espousal of the cause of scientific
knowledge is open to some suspicion, however. They admit
that they cannot comprehend the Overmind and that certain
areas of intuitive knowledge and certain mental faculties
are closed to them. They are repeatedly deceptive about
100
themselves, first about their appearance, thereafter about
their purpose in coming to Earth. First they say that they
have come to prevent man's self-destruction, and that man
is doomed never to reach the stars. Later they proclaim
they were sent to do the bidding of the Overmind, to
oversee man's metamorphosis, and, admittedly, to engage in
scientific observation of that transformation for them
selves. Meanwhile, one man does reach the stars, returning
home to find that homo sapiens is no more and that the
children of man, although no longer recognizably human, will
indeed reach, and perhaps inherit, the stars. Only toward
the end do the Overlords admit that their name, made up by
their human "subjects," is an ironic one, in view of their
own "subject" circumstances. Until then, they are perfectly
content with the title, even reinforcing it at first with
the false image of fifty ships covering the globe when
there was only one, then with the demands that only one man
treat with them and that he be compelled to "ascend" in
their vehicle to the real ship hovering over New York.
It may be that their duplicity is necessary, that
man can only be given closer approximations to the truth as
he becomes ready for them. Approximations are also the
ways in which science and reason deal with the world out
side the inquiring mind. However it could also be true
that even the closest approximation given by the Overlords
is far from the truth, perhaps because of the Overlords'
101
own inability to comprehend, perhaps because of further
deliberate fabrication. Their model or analogy in Earth’s
folklore is called the "Father of Lies" and they certainly
resemble him in other ways. At Karellen's first appearance,
he is described in terms of his resemblance to Satan: "the
leathery wings, the little horns, the barbed tail--all were
there" (p. 303). He offsets his appearance by the dramatic
device, in emulation or parody presumably of Christ's
command to his disciples to "suffer little children to come
unto me," of making his entrance "with a human child resting
trustfully on either arm" (p. 303). The Overlords' names,
Karellen, Rashaverak, Thantalteresco, Vindarten, if they are
not traditional, seem to have been chosen for their somewhat
"devilish" sound. Even their home planet suggests to Jan
the image of Hell: the light from its sun is red, the
natives fly through the dense atmosphere, their architecture
seems to him dystopianly functional and unornamented. If
Jan were better versed in literature, he might recognize
the parallel with Milton's Paradise Lost in the fact that
Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witch
craft and Demonology (New York, 1959) gives the following
names as those o£ medieval demons: Ancitif, Arfaxat,
Asmodeus, Astaroth, Balberith, Beelzebub, Belias, Belphegor,
Calconix, Carnivean, Carreau, Consaque, Gressil, Grongate,
Iuvart, Leviathan, Lucifer, Mammon, Oeillet, Olivier,
Phaeton, Rosier, Satan, Sonneillon, Verrier, Verrine.
Bernard J. Bamberger, Fallen Angels (Philadelphia, 1952)
includes the following as names of demons or fallen angels:
Appolyon, Asbeel, Azazel, Jekon, Kafkefoni, Kasbiel,
Kasdaye, Kastimon, Lilith, Malchira, Metanbuchus, Samael,
Semjaza, Ben Temalyon, Uzzael.
102
this is not the world on which they had "evolved," but one
which they have "conquered."
In stark contrast to the anthropomorphism of the
Overlords, visible not only in their form but also in their
thinking processes, in their technology, and in their desire
to communicate, to sympathize, to be liked, is the totally
alien quality apparently exhibited by the Overmind, which
plays the role of God to the Overlords1 Satan. In itself
and through its creatures (Earth's children) the Overmind
evokes images of unlimited power for unknowable purposes.
To the human observer, Jan Rodricks, it appears in the
guise of a "living volcano" on the Overlords' planet; the
Overmind's power is also visible in the action of the chil
dren of Earth, who convert their planet to energy in order
to propel themselves to an unknown destination. In both
cases, the visible manifestation seems to be a side-effect,
insignificant to the purposes of the "being." The Overlords
appear to understand something of its behavior and composi
tion, from having observed before the process of metamorpho
sis, as is indicated by the following speech of Karellen:
"We believe--it is only a theory--that the Overmind is try
ing to grow, to extend its powers and its awareness of the
universe. By now it must be the sum of many races, and long
ago it left the tyranny of matter behind. It is conscious
of intelligence, everywhere. When it knew that you were
almost ready, it sent us here to do its bidding, to prepare
103
you for the transformation that is now at hand" (p. 404).
The change always begins with a child, spreading like
"crystals round the first nucleus in a saturated solution"
(p. 405). Eventually, the children will become united in a
single entity, unreachable by any communication understood
by Man or Overlord, unfathomable by any individual, rational
mind. This is the extent of the Overlords' knowledge, and
it may not be reliable; the metaphor of crystallization can
hardly be adequate to describe the transformed state. All
they can really know, when the Overmind contacts them, is
that it wants them to serve as "midwives" at another "birth"
(p. 398). And they go, like angels at God's bidding, but
"fallen angels," incapable of sharing in the deity's glory.
On the surface, the Overlords' inability (and ours)
to understand the Overmind is merely a sign of its strange
ness and vastness, which may some day become comprehensible
to reason and science, but underneath, we feel the tug of
the irrational. This must be a symbol of the "being"
variously known as God, the Oversoul, the Great Spirit, and
other names, and the children's metamorphosis neatly
parallels Nirvana, the loss of self, or the awakening of
"cosmic consciousness" of which the mystics have so often
spoken. It is therefore fitting that the Overmind be no
more describable than it is, that it be known only through
its works, through unintentional side-effects of its works
at that. And the confidence of any man or Overlord in
104
isolation, that he will come to understand this being,
rings as hollow as the boasts of Milton's Satan. Thus the
interplay between the Overlords and the Overmind, explained
with tantalizing incompleteness to Jan on his return from
the stars, is a reworking of the old "morality play" situa
tion of the Devil trying to steal away from God the souls
of men. Here the Devil appears to be a devoted servant
following out God's orders, but the Overlords never stop
trying to bring Him down to their level, and they manage to
convince the reason-loving men of the story that, just as
our science has told us, everything has a natural explana
tion. Those men are doomed, of course, while their
children ("the children of man") are saved, so the real
stage of Clarke's morality play is the mind of the reader,
who can be expected to take the side of reason, science,
the West, and the Devil, with just the slightest anxiety
over his choice.
The universe may be comprehensible to reason, as
the Overlords assert, but even on the rational surface of
the story, the Overmind and the metamorphosis cannot be
grasped in terms of science as we know it. The existence
of aliens and of "mental" phenomena beyond the reach of our
five senses and their mechanical extensions may be posited,
but neither has ever been verified by science, which can
only deal with empirical data. Science fiction is not
limited to verified fact, but it does usually make an
105
attempt to domesticate the unknown in terms of sensory
observation or at least in terms of some tentative theory
not too openly contradictory of known natural law. Clarke,
however, has considerably stretched these limitations.
His mechanical wonders and quasi-utopian communi
ties do not stretch credibility to any great extent;
although they are neither thoroughly explained nor convinc
ingly shown in action, they are familiar conventions,
plausible enough developments from our present state of
technology. His aliens, too, although they are neither
predictable nor controllable by man, are acceptable as
science fictions. The Overlords are obviously there,
present to the senses, and more or less understandable to
human psychology. Through them we are given the theory
which almost makes acceptable the concept of the Overmind.
For both beings, however, this science fictional domestica
tion is undercut by the literary domestication, i.e., it
isn't reasonable that strange life forms should be so
similar to long-established figures of human mythology.
The real affront to credibility, however, comes from
Clarke's apparent stand on e.s.p.
Contradicting himself in the space of two para
graphs, Karellen declares first that "there are powers of
the mind, and powers beyond the mind, which your science
could never have brought within its framework without
shattering it entirely," then that the Overlords had been
106
sent to Earth largely to stop scientists from investigating
parapsychology, which they were doing presumably with some
chance of success (p. 403). Using this fictional elimina
tion of productive research as an excuse, Clarke has
Karellen, who can only know "extra-sensory powers" from the
outside, explain them in traditional "spiritualist" terms:
these powers are genuine, man has labelled but not fully
verified them in the past, and they have some mysterious
connection with the powers and workings of the Overmind.
Where Clarke shows us these powers in action, he is
similarly vague: the children's dreams, their telekinetic
powers, their united participation in a kind of "cosmic
dance" are all credited to their mystical contact with the
Overmind, while Jean Greggson's telepathic experience with
an Overlord at the party in Part Two was accomplished by
means of a oui.ja board and explained by the fact that she
is a "sensitive," i.e. a potential spiritualist medium.
Perhaps, if we can accept at face value the concept of the
Overmind, we should not cavil at a little spiritualism,
although it does seem a bit unfair to explain one "impossi
bility" (e.s.p.) by another (the Overmind), which in turn
can only be partially comprehended by means of still another
15
(the Overlords). Even if we accept all of these
15
It may be, of course, that Clarke does not regard
e.s.p. as an impossibility, at least in the context of this
book, although he evinces some skepticism in Profiles of
the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the~~Possible~
(New York, Toronto, and London, 1965), pp. 20, 197-198. The
107
improbabilities as part of the context of the story, we may
balk with Knight at Clarke's rewriting history in order to
16
take another para-psychological excursion. Despite the
existence of scholarship indicating a medieval European
origin for Satan as we now know him, out of bits and pieces
of pagan mythology, Clarke insists that the Devil is part of
the mythology of all peoples and has been for thousands of
years, because of a racial memory (or "premonition") of the
17
future.
Not only does a gaffe of this magnitude, if it is
recognized as an error, tend to upset all but the most
hypnotic suspension of disbelief at the moment, but the
doubt that it raises as to the reliability of the narrator
also tends to undermine the credibility of the entire
narrative. Thus, the author may defeat even our tentative
acceptance for the duration of the novel, not only of e.s.p.
and of the Overmind's existence beyond the grasp of science,
problem would then be one of presentation, and spiritualism
seems a poor source of imagery, if credibility is desired.
■^Knight, p. 188.
"^Although demons of various kinds may have existed
in man's imagination for as long as he had one, the particu
lar shape of the medieval Devil which Clarke has chosen for
his Overlords does seem to be an amalgamation peculiar to
the late Middle Ages. See Ernest Jones, Nightmare, Witches,
and Devils (New York, 1931), pp. 154-159. See also:
Bamberger (above, note 14), pp. 208-232; Pennethorne Hughes,
Witchcraft (Baltimore, 1967), pp. 104-115; and especially
Maurice Garmon and Jean Vinchon, The Devil: An Historical,
Critical and Medical Study, trans. Stephen Haden Guest
(London, 1929), passim.
108
but even of the powers of reason and the validity of
science, themselves. It may well be that Clarke wants us to
question the omniscience of science--Karellen's speech on
mental powers denigrates human science as a panacea--and
even to question the questioner--Karellen1s lies and inade
quacies suggest that--but undermining the veracity of the
narrator is a dangerous game to play when the reader already
knows that the subject matter is a tenuously anchored
fantasy.
Why does Clarke even attempt this explanation of
mythology? Why, in a science-fiction novel, does he fill
several pages with a spiritualistic seance? Neither was
necessary to the theme it would appear, or to the book as a
whole. The Overlords' parallel with the Christian Devil
could have been left unexplained, without impairing them as
alien beings or as literary symbols; the explanation given
is worse than none at all. The seance functions peripher
ally to show the similarity between human and Overlord
minds, and to foreshadow the role of Jean Greggson's chil
dren as first contacts with the Overmind. It also serves to
point up man's boredom with the Golden Age and the ridicu
lous ends which his technology can be made to serve, namely
the production of mechanized ouija boards, but Rupert Boyce,
whom the party characterizes, is an unimportant figure, and
the success of the seance undercuts the satire. The least
important purpose the seance serves is to provide Jan
109
Rodricks with the catalogue number of the Overlords' home
star; his visit to the museum to consult the catalogue is
equally irrelevant to his stowing away on the starship,
which will go where it will, with or without his knowledge
of his destination. The problem, apparent here on the
science fictional level, is essentially a literary one:
Clarke is not fully in control of his materials, i.e. he
has attempted more than he is capable of fulfilling.
The "cosmic viewpoint" which Clarke praised in his
Kalinga Prize acceptance speech is common in science
fiction, as is its negative corollary, inattention to
details. Besides leading writers into multi-volumed "future
histories," the cosmic viewpoint encourages close attention
in smaller works only to the major outlines and the back-
18
ground. The characters are frequently left to fend for
themselves, as it were, in a jungle of disorderly plots,
melodramatic incidents, and haphazard image-patterns, which
are symptomatic of an unbalanced narrative technique.
Unity, if there is any in such a composition, frequently is
maintained only by an uninspired consistency of style and
tone, and by the momentum built up in the unwary reader by
18
A similar criticism may be found in Alfred Bester,
"Science Fiction and the Renaissance Man," in Basil
Davenport et al., The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination
and Social Criticism (Chicago, 1964), p. 115. Two recent
"future histories" that are quite well known are now each
collected in one volume: Isaac Asimov, The Foundation
Trilogy (Garden City, [1966]); Robert A. Heinlein, The Past
Through Tomorrow (New York, 1967).
110
the breakneck pace of events. Childhood’s End, like many
books inferior to it, suffers from just such a dispropor
tionate emphasis on the large, "significant" effects, at the
expense of the parts of which they are composed.
Structurally, this failing is visible in several
ways. The three titled sections are not balanced units,
except in length. Part One is unified by the person of
Stormgren and his relationship with the invisible Karellen
on one side and the entire human race on the other. It Is
separated from Part Two by time as well as by characters,
Karellen alone carrying over from Part One. Parts Two and
Three share the same characters, working out two separate
story lines, and the same time period, although a large gap
opens in the middle of Part Three. Each succession of
actions ("plot" seems an inappropriate word) is broken down
into almost random fragments of panoramic chronicle, desul
tory conversation, poorly motivated melodrama, and tentative
internal monologue. Part of the problem with form may have
to do with the fact that the book "just growed" from the
novelette that was originally Part One, but this fact is
symptomatic of Clarke's inability to conceive of his subject
in satisfactory fictional terms.
It is as if Clarke had written several stories of
varying length and intensity, which he then attempted to
interweave with each other and with connective tissue
supplied by an outline-summary of history. The point-of-
Ill
view is uniformly third-person-omniscient, yet the narrative
duties seem split between an awe-struck, would-be historian
and a disinterested story-teller, who lacks any sense of
drama. The historian at least is interested in his theme,
and so impressed with its magnitude that he feels called
upon to match it with his own attempts at grandeur, includ
ing panoramic, wide-angle photographs and impressive-
sounding, if vague and unsupported, generalizations and
miscellaneous sententiae. By contrast, the story-teller
seems somewhat detached, giving us "slices of life"--
political negotiating sessions, a party, a visit to a
library, a press conference, a group meeting, a counseling
session, a sightseeing trip--without revealing the princi
ples on which he bases his selections. The individual
episodes stubbornly resist integration with the whole, yet
they are also unable to stand up as independent units,
partly because they are meant as "illustrations," partly
because they are insignificant in themselves.
Clarke's attempt is clearly intended to counter
point the great, slow movement toward metamorphosis with
the everyday activities that people, ignorant of their
contribution to the whole, carry on independently, the kind
of activities he usually treats in his less ambitious
fiction of the near and "predictable" future. In such a
setting, what plot there is provides a mere peg on which to
hang the background. In such a context, where the
112
background is stable, detailed, and relatively familiar, a
bit of melodrama may add a little spice to the narrative,
and the withholding of necessary information may be justi
fied as a means of making the situation come to life. But
where the background is continually shifting over a large
span of time and space, and where the context involves the
larger mysteries of life, of existence, and of divinity,
such "stagey" effects as the kidnaping of Stormgren, the
Overlords' gradual self-unveiling, the explanation of one
mystery in terms of another, are not only unnecessary but
also annoying and self-defeating because of their irrele
vance. Instead of irrelevant episodes of mystery and
melodrama, Childhood's End might well have benefitted from
a series of actions dependent on each other and clearly
illustrative of the great events around them, i.e. a unified
and integrated plot. But Clarke is apparently unable to
imagine a plot adequate to the scope of his framework; his
"predictive" novels are equally plotless and even his tale
of the far future is made up of a series of accidental
occurrences, set into motion almost haphazardly by the
adolescent hero's desire for change and adventure. So the
counterpoint structure was attempted for Childhood's End and
the result is a hodgepodge of pretentious chronicle, apolo
getic melodrama, and superficial sketches of static
113
19
unrelated, individual scenes.
As it is practically plotless, so the novel is also
almost characterless. This too is due in part to the book's
ambitious theme and tremendous scope, against which individ
uals and their merely personal problems are bound to look
somewhat insignificant. Against the backdrop of eternal
time and infinite space, the unknown bulks extremely large,
and even the usual reaction of characters in science fiction
toward the unknown, a kind of calculated respect for size
and power, which allows for action, tends to give way in
this story to the awe and reverence that we term "reli
gious." Man the Creator, acting, progressing, continually
making changes in his environment, the ideal protagonist of
science fiction, tends to become man the Creature, full of
fear and wonder and more than willing to follow orders, when
an encounter with an incalculable unknown power forces him
to admit how small he is and how little he really knows.
Clarke definitely does not minimize the unknown; the
Overmind is not only unknown but unknowable, and the death
of the human race is the novel's end result. However, the
fear of racial annihilation is counterbalanced by a degree
of pride in man's being chosen, and by an acceptance, on the
19
Even if we regard the book as an elegy for man
kind, for the end of personal and racial "childhood," the
elegiac tone is inconsistent, and insufficient to maintain
unity over 75,000 words without a more carefully wrought
"poetic structure," and the lame, pedestrian style of the
novel seems particularly incongruous for a poem.
114
part of the characters we meet, of the inevitable as somehow
"good." Puny though man may be on an absolute scale, on the
scale by which we live in the present, his future achieve
ments are respectable; certainly his potential, symbolized
by the Overlords, is by no means slighted. Although the
fragmentation of the narrative prevents us from becoming
acquainted with individual men, it allows Clarke to show us
representative moments of what he considers their better,
rational selves, and thus to preserve both the wonders of
man and his science, and of the awesome realities beyond.
The four major characters, Stormgren, Karellen,
George, and Jan, are not lost in a multitude of minor
figures, as the chronicle form might suggest. They are
practically the only characters, and one of them is involved
in every episode which is acted out and not merely talked
about. They are all males, representing the active prin
ciple, and all appear to be confident, as we have seen, that
everything has a rational explanation. This appearance of
rationality is generally reinforced by their lack of
irrational behavior (unless belief in rationality in the
face of the incomprehensible unknown is itself irrational),
and by the glimpses Clarke gives us of their mental proc
esses (proper grammatical sentences, with no irrational
stream-of-consciousness). However, they are not really
given much to say, to do, or to think, so that we hardly
know them as more than marionettes in a cosmic puppet-show.
115
Only Karellen, who exists throughout the book, who has seen
the whole pattern of events previously, and who can observe
it with relatively detached and "scientific" curiosity, has
any real stature. Behind his posturing and lecturing, his
deceit for the benefit of his human "wards," lies a sense of
tragedy which makes him more "human" than any of them. It
is more the rational than the emotional side of humanity
which he represents, the intellectual stubbornness which
doomed his prototype, Satan, to a similarly "tragic" and
isolated immortality,
A resigned acceptance of what must be is common to
all four major characters, and is largely responsible for
the elegiac tone which pervades the book, becoming most
intense toward the end. Uncontrolled emotional outbursts
are apparently nonexistent in "the Golden Age," and
Stormgren sets the tone for Part One when he firmly rejects
the irrational rebellion led by the religious leader,
Wainwright, against the invisible Overlords. Even the
matter-of-fact "story-telling" narrator seems conscious of
impending doom, in contrast to which humanity's inconsequen
tial behavior earns an ironic smile. Although Clarke
sometimes stumbles over awkward circumlocutions, trite
sententiae, pedantic speech-making, and labored humor, his
pedestrian style, his simple, lucid sentences, and his
uncomplicated vocabulary seldom draw the reader's attention
away from the narrative and the tone provided by events.
116
In scenes involving the Overlords, to be sure, they are
accompanied by a sense of melancholy, but it reaches the
reader more by means of what they stand for than by means
of Clarke's descriptive powers. Only towards the end, an
essentially flat style rises to heights of mellifluousness
and complexity, as the author succeeds in imparting a sense
of majesty to the passages dealing with the alien life-
forms and the great unknown. Clarke's attempts at generat
ing a "sense of wonder," which range from juvenile "gee-
whiz" impressions of the Overlords and their technology to a
quasi-religious awe in the contemplation of the destiny of
man, are most successful at the closing, as the children's
testing of their powers grows more confident and culminates
in the cataclysmic shock witnessed by Jan up close, then by
Karellen far in the distance. The note of regret, although
cloying and sentimental at times (Jeff Greggson's dog mourn
ing for his master lost in dreams, Jeff's parents saying a
final farewell just before the community of New Athens blows
itself up), also gains more depth with this ending, echoing
crescendo.
The major source of unity, besides the figure of
Karellen and the basic consistency of style and tone, seems
to lie in certain image-patterns and the repetition of
significant motifs. The dozen or so allusions to figures
from folklore and history, while they may be intended to
add depth to the narrative, are so haphazardly chosen and
117
introduced as to seem unrelated to the whole. On the other
hand, the apocalyptic and demonic imagery of the Overlords
and the Overmind is so persistent as to lay down at the
symbolic level a morality play contradicting the rational
message on the surface. The majority of patterns function
somewhere in between these two extremes, mainly as unifying
factors. The power and superiority of Stormgren over the
human masses is echoed by the Overlords' relationship to
him, and the Overmind's relationship to them. Karellen
refers to humans as beloved pets at one point; the image is
reminiscent of his attitude earlier toward Stormgren, and
it is reinforced again by the loneliness of the Greggsons'
dog. A continual widening of perspective is seen also in
the Overlords' intellectual striptease, in the importance
given e.s.p., in the frequent panoramic views, of Earth as
well as of time, space, and society. The frustrated takeoff
of man's first moon-rockets is echoed by Karellen's edict
that "the Stars are not for Man," and by Jan's discovery of
the proclamation's essential truth; Jan's successful flight
as a stowaway is foreshadowed by his sight of a starship
taking off, and in turn is echoed by the final departure of
the children (and of the Overlords). The final metamorpho
sis of the children into a fully symbiotic, super-organic
life form is foreshadowed by several other kinds of
"togetherness": a mob demonstration against the Overlords
and the gangsters' "conference" with the kidnaped Stormgren
118
in Part One; Karellen's entrance with the children and
Rupert Boyce's party in Part Two; the utopian community of
New Athens and the closeness of George and Jean Greggson in
Part Three.
If Childhood's End is by no means a fully satisfying
work of literature, it does illustrate certain common
characteristics of science fiction at its best, and it does
exhibit some literary virtues. Respect for rational
thought, construction of a "cosmic" perspective, relentless
pursuit of extrapolative hypotheses, faith in human dignity,
an interesting interweaving of themes and motifs, and a
genuine evocation of the "sense of wonder" are positive
achievements, however they may be undercut by deficiencies
in style, narrative structure, and characterization.
In a sense, Clarke may be considered a transitional
figure. A member of the second generation of pulp science
fiction writers, he is in many ways closer to the first
generation and to the British tradition of H. G. Wells, Olaf
Stapledon, and C. S. Lewis, all of whom are outside the pulp
20
field. Although his subject-matter is usually the short-
range extrapolation associated with "social science
fiction," his orientation is more toward the "sense of
wonder" of the earlier writers, and his emphasis on sensa
tional content at the expense of form, style, and psychology
on
See also Moskowitz (above, note 10), pp. 374-391.
119
is one that the second generation was to some extent trying
21
to overcome. Childhood1s End has a high seriousness about
it that sets it apart from the ordinary pulp science fiction
novel of any generation, but still, in the growth of science
fiction as a literary genre, its combination of aspects from
science fiction's infancy and maturity make it represent a
median stage of adolescence.
21
See Algis Budrys1 criticisms of Clarke in this
regard, "Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy, October, 1967, pp. 189-
190.
CHAPTER IV
ISAAC ASIMOV: THE CAVES OF STEEL
As prolific as Arthur C. Clarke in both science
fiction and popular science, Isaac Asimov is also an influ
ential apologist for the kind of science fiction developed
by the "second generation" writers under John Campbell in
the late Thirties."*" First published by Campbell, in 1939,
Asimov had already published seven novels and numerous
stories before his first significant theoretical essay
2
appeared in Reginald Bretnor1s 1953 anthology of criticism.
In this essay, Asimov defined his kind of writing as social
science fiction which added concern "with the impact of
scientific advance upon human beings" to the basic setting
of science fiction in general, "a fictitious society,
differing from our own chiefly in the nature or extent of
its technological development." Within the subgenre of
^Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of
Modern Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966),
pp. 249-265. See also Contemporary Authors, II (1963), and
Current Biography (19537"!
2
Isaac Asimov, "Social Science Fiction," in Modern
Science Fiction: Its Meaning and Its Future, ed. Reginald
Bretnor (New York, 1953), ppT 157-196.
"^Bretnor, pp. 171, 169.
120
121
social science fiction, he suggested that his own works
generally tended toward what he called the "chess game" kind
of story, which involves a general extrapolation of trends
from "a fixed starting position . . . which assumes the
socioeconomic environment we now possess," as against the
"chess puzzle" variety, which tends to satirize the present
by means of "some radical development or overgrowth of some
aspect of our way of life."^
In 1957, several books and many articles and stories
later, he redefined the whole field of science fiction for
the readers of The Humanist as "that branch of literature
which deals with the response of human beings to advances in
science and technology." Implying thus that all science
fiction should be social science fiction, and concerned now
with "human response" more than with "the impact of scien
tific advance," he nevertheless insisted that setting was
the most important ingredient of all. Comparing science
fiction with other commercial publishing categories, Asimov
classified it with fantasy and social satire on the basis of
setting, because in all three "the background has as little
£
relation to reality as do the characters themselves."
^Bretnor, pp. 179, 181.
^Isaac Asimov, "Escape into Reality," Is Anyone
There? (Garden City, 1967), p. 286.
6
Anyone, p. 284.
122
Stressing this unreality of the background, he contended
that in these genres, background should be of major impor
tance for itself. The disconcerting effect on the reader,
he went on to say, was modified by the presence of other
traditional features in fantasy (complete arbitrariness)
and social satire (moral instruction), but the unfamiliarity
of background was intensified by science fiction's plausible
but amoral extrapolation. Far from finding fault with
science fiction on this account, Asimov maintained that its
innovation in the conception of setting was a positive
distinction.
From the naturalistic viewpoint of most science
fiction, the primacy of setting is quite understandable:
the arbitrary or extrapolated setting influences physical
needs, which tend to reinforce certain customs and mores,
which in turn have a definite effect on individual charac
ter. Such a view of influences may well make of "human
response" something rather mechanical, involving "types" or
groups of characters reacting as their author would have
them do to prove his point, regardless of whether they
illustrate real human behavior. But if all this background
activity takes place in the pre-writing of the book, in the
area we have called "pure science fiction," then human
character and behavior, displayed in action, dialogue, and
thought, may be what change a speculative essay into a
fictional experience. And the realization that "human
123
response" is not merely a mechanical reaction to "the
impact of scientific advance" may explain in part the
success of Asimov's two best novels, whose publication dates
fall between these two theoretical essays.
Concern for human character and for making his
science fiction a felt experience was not fully developed in
his early writings, Asimov admitted indirectly in the 1953
essay, by acknowledging the presence as a determining factor
in Pebble in the Sky (1950) of an allegorical plot situation
based on the Roman Empire's suppression of Judea. With so
rigid a structure and such an emphasis on the social level,
it is not surprising that individual character and personal
human values are relatively undeveloped in that book. Human
beings are even less developed in his other books that are
set against the background of a Galactic Empire: The Stars,
Like Dust (1951), The Currents of Space (1952), and the
"Foundation series" of stories and novelettes reconstructed
into a trilogy of novels, Foundation (1951), Foundation and
Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953).
In all of these books, the background is carefully
conceived and developed in the "chess game" manner, with an
emphasis on humanity, but humanity in the mass. The
universe is strictly human-colonized, the Galactic Empire a
relatively loose confederation modelled on the Roman Empire.
^Bretnor, pp. 179-180.
124
Since Asimov has written elsewhere in favor of the possi
bility of intelligent aliens, their absence here appears to
be, as Sam Moslcowitz maintains, due to a lack of interest
g
in a world without human conflict.
Human conflict in terms of human character, however,
Asimov did not manage to illustrate successfully until he
suppressed his fascination with the Galactic Empire. In
The Caves of Steel (1953; 1954) and The Naked Sun (1956;
1957), the Empire, in its earliest stage, is reduced to some
fifty-odd planets, and the vast canvas which it provided is
shrunken to a limited setting on a single world. The "chess
game" kind of extrapolation is still present, but the two
kinds of society developed have something of the "chess
puzzle" particularization about them. Against this setting,
the incongruously large intrigues played out in the earlier
books by people who are little more than chess pawns give
way to another conventional kind of puzzle, the solving of
a murder mystery, by a recognizably human detective and an
almost perfectly human robot.
Of Asimov's other fiction, including six collections
of stories and nine novels (six of them for children), three
books are particularly relevant to this discussion. The
Death Dealers (1958) is a contemporary mystery novel, whose
Q
Seekers (above, note 1), pp. 259-260. See also
the essays on "other life" in Is Anyone There? pp. 183-213.
125
amateur detective is a professor of chemistry (Asimov taught
biochemistry at Boston University for a number of years).
I, Robot (1950) includes nine stories of the previous decade
concerning robots which had some connection with Susan
Calvin, chief robopsychologist for the manufacturing firm of
U. S. Robots, whose reminiscences tie the volume together.
The Rest of the Robots (1964) completes the series of robot
tales with eight more stories, four involving Susan Calvin,
and the two science fiction murder mysteries, of which The
Caves of Steel is usually considered somewhat fresher and
more original, if only because it set a new pattern which
9
its sequel followed.
When it was first published, The Caves of Steel
received only specialty reviews, and they were somewhat
reserved. Villiers Gerson in the New York Times compli
mented Asimov for being aware of many other problems besides
murder.^ Fletcher Pratt in Saturday Review praised him for
Ma first-class detective story ... [in which] even his
9
Seekers, p. 263. On the basis of the stories in
I, Robot alone, Asimov has been credited, along with Fredric
Brown, with merging science fiction and detective themes in
A. E. Murch, The Development of the Detective Novel (New
York, 1958), p. 233. As early as 1951, a trend "toward a
mariage de convenance between fantasy, scientific or not,
and the cfetective story" (p. 16) was noted in Fletcher
Pratt, "Time, Space and Literature," Saturday Review,
July 28, 1951, pp. 16-17, 27-28.
"^Review by Villers Gerson, New York Times, March 7,
1954, p. 16.
126
robots are completely believable.""^ H. H. Holmes in the
New York Heraid-Tribune Book Review called the book "a
splendid picture of the future technological war between
men and robots who can replace them on so many jobs . . .
[in a mystery which] states its own terms so clearly and
adheres to them so precisely that it is absolutely fair to
12
the reader." P. Schuyler Miller in Astounding agreed
that the novel was "honest" but he grumbled that it was
"not the virtuoso job that 'The Demolished Man' [sic] was,"
citing a recent science fictional crime novel by Alfred
13
Bester. Groff Conklin, writing in the magazine, Galaxy,
that had serialized The Caves of Steel, saw it as "partic
ularly fascinating to Asimov experts, because of the way it
combines his interest in robotics with his consuming
preoccupation with the sociology of a technologically-mad
bureaucratically-tethered world of tomorrow.Damon
Knight was uncommonly generous, with special praise for
Asimov's science fictional speculation, thoroughness of
11
Review by Fletcher Pratt, Saturday Review,
August 7, 1954, p. 15.
12
Review by H. H. Holmes, New York Herald-Tribune
Book Review, February 7, 1954, p. 10. Review similarly
worded by Anthony Boucher (also a pseudonym of William
Anthony White), F&SF, May, 1954, p. 88.
13
Review by P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding,
November, 1954, p. 150.
" * ■ ^Review by Groff Conklin, Galaxy, July, 1954, pp.
97-98. Isaac Asimov, "The Caves of Steel," Galaxy, October,
1953, pp. 4-66; November, 1953, pp. 98-159; December, 1953,
pp. 108-159.
127
sensory detail, and technical skill in integrating his
science fictional and mystery plots. ^ But even Knight
indicated only some of the book's strengths in ideas and
technique and none of its weaknesses in style and depth.
A novel of about 80,000 words, The Caves of Steel,
1 f i
is set in New York City, around the year 5000 A.D. Not
merely a murder-mystery, it is also a study in self-
discovery, a dissertation on the need for institutionalized
change to avoid intellectual stagnation, and a portrait in
some depth of life in an overpopulated and restrictive
megalopolis. Not mere accretions to the main narrative in
the form of obtrusive essays, these larger issues emerge
from the technology, politics, mores, prejudices, and every
day activities of a strange but familiar world. That world,
in surprising detail, is revealed by means of a carefully
arranged series of events which enable the detective, using
only the same information which is available to the reader,
to reconstruct the crime and identify the criminal.
Asimov establishes the background firmly in the
first seven chapters (the first installment, in the book's
serial form). Starting with a bare sketch of the locale,
the crime, and the detective, Plainclothesman Lije Baley,
15
Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder: Essays on
Modern Science Fiction, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1967), pp. ^0-93.
1 fi
Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel, in The Rest of
the Robots (Garden City, 1964), pp. 167-362. All page
references in the text are to this edition.
128
Asimov soon introduces us to the transportation system of
the City, the etiquette of the communal lavatory, the home
life of a middle-class civil servant, and the political
background of the murder. An important part of these
politics, the hostility of Earthmen toward robots and
Spacers (who are humans from the Outer Planets, Earth's
former colonies), is so much a part of Lije's psychology
that it leads him to make a serious mistake. His second
day on the case, at the scene of the crime, the Spacers'
"ghetto" outside the domed City, he erroneously asserts that
his Spacer partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, is not a perfectly
humanoid robot but a human being, the supposedly murdered
creator of the robot.
The action quickens in the next six chapters (the
second installment) as Lije, his accusation refuted, for
given, and explained in part by Dr. Han Fastolfe's analysis
of the cultural differences between his people and Lije's,
returns to the City with Daneel. After a conference with
Police Commissioner Enderby, Lije and Daneel visit a commu
nity kitchen, escape some hostile pursuers, and retire to an
apartment distant from Lije's own. On the morning of the
third day, Lije and Daneel indulge in mutual recriminations.
Lije's second accusation of Daneel is refuted by an expert
in robotics, but Daneel's suggestion that Lije's wife,
Jessie, is involved in a conspiracy, appears to be confirmed
when she bursts into the office.
129
Jessie confesses in secret that she has been a
member of a group of "Medievalists" opening the concluding
and most rapidly-paced installment. Although she seems to
corroborate Lije's belief that Medievalists are merely
dreamers, wishing to restore "the old ways" (of the Twen
tieth Century), Lije and Daneel nevertheless proceed to
"Yeast-town," where most of the City's food is grown, to
question another supposed conspirator. Returning to Police
Headquarters with the suspect under arrest, they find Lije
suspected of destroying R. Sammy, a primitive office-robot
which knew of Jessie's visit, by means of a radioactive tool
taken from the power plant through which Lije and Daneel
escaped the previous night. In a suspenseful confrontation
(with a suddenly-imposed time limit), Lije counters Commis
sioner Enderby's accusation with a logical but unprovable
theory, supported at the last minute by a shred of evidence
visible in a three-dimensional film of the murder area
obtained by Daneel from his masters. Identified as the
accidental killer--he had meant to destroy Daneel--Enderby
confesses; he is pardoned, at Lije's request, in return for
a promise of political cooperation in the Spacers' plan to
get Earthmen once again to emigrate to other worlds.
On the first page of The Caves of Steel, the reader
is thrust into an unfamiliar world treated as a simple
matter of fact, a world in which his major points of refer
ence are established science fiction conventions. The
130
background is obviously extrapolated from social organiza
tion and technological hardware of the twentieth century;
the technology, sociology, politics, psychology, and sheer
physical presence of this background are painstakingly built
up within the novel. The major plot, although it is
constructed according to the traditional pattern of the
detective novel, is also science fictional, in that it
involves a crime, a solution, and a team of detectives
possible only within a science fictional framework. And
the missionary message of science, progress, expansion, and
the future, a message which the Spacers bring to Earth as
part of the minor plot, is the traditional gospel of science
fiction, modified in this book by the protagonist's attempt
to integrate it with those aspects of culture worth preserv
ing from the past.
The physical setting is a gigantic, domed City (the
word is always capitalized) of some twenty million people,
on an Earth of eight billion City dwellers, the most popu
lous and backward of the fifty planets inhabited by human
beings. A standard setting for utopian and dystopian
fiction since Wells, the large, isolated, enclosed, self-
sufficient community is usually little more than a dream or
nightmare setting. Seen from the standpoint of a normal,
imperfectly satisfied citizen, not of a utopian planner of
dystopian critic, Asimov's New York is mainly a place to
live, its virtues and faults being simply there, its most
131
important feature being that it is home, that it has a
lived-in feeling.
Seen in passing by a man at home in it, a man pre
occupied with the job he is doing, the City presents a
kaleidoscope of impressions, familiar to Lije but not to the
reader. As we follow Lije across the "moving strips" which
compose the City's internal transit system, on his way to
meet Daneel for the first time, we see how that system
works, physically, geographically, and economically, and we
also overhear the thoughts with which the commuter combats
his boredom. Since Lije likes to muse about history, and to
explain things to himself (this is_ a part of his character),
the shapes in the kaleidoscope begin to take on consistent
outlines. His thoughts, ranging from memories of his
youthful opposition to the Spacers, to internal commentary
on immediate sensory experience, to consideration of the
City's age, size, food supply, and complexity, return to
the conflict between Earthmen and Spacers, stopping abruptly
as he remembers in time to maneuver his way to the exit for
Spacetown.
Gradually, through such indirect methods of exposi
tion, the reader comes to know the City both from outside
(statistics, blueprints, history) and from inside (its look,
sounds, feel, and smell). He experiences it not only
physically (its moving strips, apartments, community
kitchens and toilets, underground highways used only for
132
emergencies, film and tape libraries, shoe stores, power
plants, hydroponics laboratories, and yeast farms) but also
sociologically (the observances of privacy, hatred of
robots, popular entertainments, games, and songs, predilec
tion for a romanticized past, envy and hatred of Spacers,
fear of heights and open spaces, to which the New Yorker is
conditioned). The reader is given no reason to wonder at
the marvels of science fictional technology, as familiar to
Lije Baley as they are to the average science fiction fan
(and increasingly to the public at large). The real wonder
is that the City is no further advanced than this after
three thousand years, and even that anomaly is explained in
part by the City's withdrawn and backward social psychology.
The City's technology has grown about as fast as its
problems, enabling it to cope with, if not alleviate the
pressure of population, the growth of which is inexorable,
although the rate of growth has lowered appreciably, rela
tive to current standards. "Moving strips," "expressways,"
and "lightworms" (moving directional signs) transport a
huge, independently mobile population more effectively than
the automobiles which used to crowd what are still called
"motorways" (only police "squad cars" and other emergency
vehicles still travel them, using "drive rods" supplied
with "beamed power" from a central transmitter). "Tri-
mension" (three-dimensional television), "micro-projectors"
(for three-dimensional microfilm), "book-films," "video
133
piping," and "communos" (public telephones with vision), by
improving communication, have made some travel unnecessary.
The need for social control has resulted in improved spying
devices, such as the "spybeam" and the "duo-beam," against
which only silence can preserve secrecy with any surety; it
has also resulted in destructive and non-destructive hand-
weapons, primarily for police, such as the "blaster,"
"subetheric hand disruptor," "neuronic whip" and "tickler."
The need for food has resulted in vast hydroponic gardens
and yeast farms, the latter producing "zymoveal" and "proto-
veg" (synthetic veal and vegetables), and requiring the
expertise of "zoologists" and other technicians. Little
or no creative energy has been directed toward finding a
way out of the City's problems, except by those outside the
City culture.
The Spacers, descendants of those who escaped Earth
to explore and colonize some fifty distant planets, avoided
overpopulation from the first, and continue to restrict
both birth and immigration. They devote their energies to
increasing their living standards, not merely trying to
halt their decline. By contrast with the burrow-like
Cities, their homes (although domed) are single dwellings,
separated by open space, even in their settlement on Earth,
Spacetown. Efficiency for them lies in the use of individu
alized robots, not mass communal services, and their basic
reason for even having an "embassy" on Earth (we are told)
134
is to propagandize for the increased use of robot workers in
the Cities. But robots are anathema to the already under
employed, semi-capitalistic workers of the Cities, and the
Spacers' mission is not aided by their cultural differences
from the people of Earth whom they are trying to help.
The Spacers' technology is plainly superior to that
of the City. Between their community and the City stands an
impenetrable barrier to keep out anything undesirable, from
rioters to bacteria. To keep their health perfect they have
developed quite thorough hygiene, so thorough that it
offends Earthmen, not only those few who have been subjected
to the sterilizing shower required to enter Spacetown, but
those who are even aware of its existence, or of the Spacer
precautions of distance and breathing filters in the pres
ence of Earthmen. They have space travel, of course, and
the wealth necessary to import fresh fruits from other
worlds. The superiority of their technology, which is
sketched in more detail in the sequel The Naked Sun, is most
fully represented here in terms of their mastery of the
science of "robotics."
When Karel ^apek coined the word "robot" to describe
the "soulless monsters" of R. U. R., intent on destroying
their creators, he had in mind the traditional image of man-
made life patterned on the medieval golem and the monster in
135
17
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Asimov's answer to this
"Frankenstein complex," explored in many of his stories, is
that robots, i.e. humanoid machines, will have safeguards
built into them to insure that they, like any other tool,
will be servants or partners for man. The technology which
will accomplish his goal of the "positronic" robot he has
explained in a rather sketchy manner at best: "My robots
[have] brains of platinum-iridium sponge and the 'brain
paths' [are] marked out by the production and destruction of
18
positrons. (No, I don't know how this is done.)" The
safeguards, which many other writers have assumed since John
Campbell derived them from Asimov's story "Reason" (1941),
19
are called, the Three Laws of Robotics. Only partially
explicit in The Caves of Steel, they are codified elsewhere:
1--A robot may not injure a human being, or, through
inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2--A robot must obey the orders given it by human
beings except where such orders would conflict
with the First Law.
17
Sam Moskowitz, Explorers of the Infinite:
Shapers of Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1963) ,
pp. 208-224. For the derivation of the word "robot," see
Zdenek Nemecek, "Karel Capek," in Joseph Remenyi et al.,
World Literatures (Pittsburgh, 1956), p. 62. See also
Robert Plank, "The Golem and the Robot," Literature and
Psychology, XV (Winter, 1965), 12-28.
18
Rest of the Robots (above, note 16), p. 42.
19
Seekers (above, note 1), pp. 256-257.
136
3--A robot must protect its own existence as long
as such protection does not conflict with the
First or Second L a w .20
Subject to these laws, Asimov's robots are completely
logical, never complicated by emotions; designed to be
obedient and constructive, they can be destructive only by
accident, and even then, only if something is wrong with
the circuits controlling the Three Laws. On the Earth of
Lije Baley's time, robots are kept in their place as slaves
by means of deliberate under-engineering; only the simplest,
most ungainly, most obviously mechanical robots are
employed, and even these clearly harmless machines arouse
the "Frankenstein complex" in men who fear for their jobs.
By contrast, the Spacer robot, R. Daneel Olivaw, represents
the ultimate extension of the robot concept; completely
human in appearance, sophisticated and completely logical in
his thinking processes, Daneel is by far the most important
piece of technological hardware in the book.
Intended to be an "information-gathering device,"
Daneel has been designed to enter the Cities of Earth, where
the Spacers, unable to withstand the noise, crowding, and
disease germs, cannot go. In New York, he is to pose as a
human being, communicating directly to Spacetown such find
ings as may enable his masters to better understand the way
the people of Earth live, thereby to understand the people
20
Rest of the Robots, p. 43.
137
from their conditioning. Besides "experiencing" and measur
ing the environment and the overt behavior of humans, Daneel
can measure and analyze a person's "mind aura," i.e. the
biochemical-electrical reactions engendered by emotional
stress. Although he cannot "experience" an emotion, he can
come reasonably close to "understanding" emotions, presum
ably as close as objective knowledge can ever come to
subjective experience. Although it appears to Lije as if
Daneel does have one emotion, a "desire" for justice, from
which Lije deduces that Daneel is not a robot, this "desire"
is actually a circuit added to the robot's brain to make him
a good detective, i.e. to make him work toward what he
defines as justice, namely "that which exists when all laws
are enforced" (p. 241).
If Daneel represents the ultimate in logical, objec
tive, scientific thinking, the men who created him are not
far from that ultimate. An emotional human being, Lije
Baley assumes at first that the Spacers, being men, have a
culture as emotionally conditioned as his own. Although he
gradually comes to understand the logical reasons behind
their behavior, he does not necessarily come to view that
behavior as attractive. Their fastidious cleanliness may
be necessary to protect them from bacteria, but the forms
it takes (avoiding physical contact with Earthmen, using
nose filters to clean Earth's air, requiring sterilizing
showers for anyone coming from the City into Spacetown)
138
still rankle. Their eugenics program is extremely logical,
improving the breed, keeping population down, but it runs
contrary to the traditions of free choice prevalent, if
limited, on Earth. The Spacers' liking for robots, fresh
air, and open spaces seems frightening to Lije, their
introduction of robots into the City's economy seems threat
ening , and their ultimate intent, to make Earthmen so
dissatisfied they will emigrate and challenge the Spacers'
complacency, seems callous and unfeeling. The summit of
Spacer egotism and inhumanity Lije sees in the act of Dr.
Sarton (the murdered man) in creating the robot Daneel "in
his own image" (p. 234). Musing over the Spacers' blas
phemy, Lije sees them as the essence of undiluted scientism:
"He had read somewhere once that Spacers had no religion,
but substituted, instead, a cold and phlegmatic intellectu-
alism raised to the heights of a philosophy" (p. 235).
Nowhere is the Spacers' scientific outlook better
illustrated than in their experiment with Lije, himself.
Having administered to him without his knowledge a drug
which lowered his resistance to suggestion, Dr. Han
Fastolfe, the spokesman for the Spacers, lectures Lije on
the possible advantages of emigration from Earth. A prac
tical man, Lije is persuaded only so far as to give theo
retical consideration to the idea; his musing turns
gradually to daydreaming aloud, then to giving a lecture
on the subject to the Medievalist suspect he and Daneel
139
arrest. The experiment succeeds, since the alleged conspir
ator, Clousarr, appears to take the lecture seriously,
according to Daneel's cerebroanalysis. Thereupon Fastolfe,
satisfied that Earthmen will once again attempt to colonize
other planets, accedes to the request of the isolationists
in Spacetown, which is to recall Daneel and prepare to
leave Earth immediately. The fact that Lije Baley, their
"guinea pig," is in trouble on their account, disturbs them
not at all, since their mission has been accomplished.
Their lack of feeling for a single human being,
especially the one with whom the reader most identifies,
merely underlines the lack of humaneness in the Spacers'
scientific approach. Lije and Clousarr are treated not as
individual human beings but as representatives of general
psychological conditions ("practical sensibility," "romantic
longing"), factors to be controlled in an attempt to upset
the social psychology of the Cities. With part of Lije's
behavior controlled, the effect objectively observed by
Daneel confirms the Spacers' prediction; inferring the
reactions of Lije and Clousarr to be representative of
Earthmen in general, the Spacers assume an inexorable chain
of events will lead to their desired goal.
That goal, also consistent with the tenets of
scientism, is the survival of man. Man's survival, they
feel, is predicated upon full utilization of science and
technology (a goal of their cultures) in combination with
140
full utilization and expression of the human being (a goal
of Earth's culture). Without such a combination, termed a
"C/Fe" society (C for carbon, or man, Fe for iron, or
machines), man will stagnate, withdraw, cease to grow (in a
cultural sense) and eventually cease to exist (in a biolog
ical sense). The one-sidedness of Earth's culture is obvi
ous from a science fictional viewpoint; cramped, regressive,
passive, the people of the City recall other imaginary
societies of Earth's future, usually overtly dystopian.
From the standpoint of Lije Baley, conscious of emotion and
humanity, the Spacers are equally incomplete; they lack a
sense of history and tradition, a feeling for life and
community, a sense of purpose and progress. Fastolfe even
admits that they, too, have stopped growing.
Whether their ideal, the perfect C/Fe society, could
ever come into being is questionable; that it would emerge
in the manner and form they desire is extremely doubtful.
Asimov's intention to portray it in a third volume, after
illustrating the negative extremes of Spacer culture on the
planet Solaria in the sequel, The Naked Sun, has never been
21
fulfilled. He claimed in 1964 that his inspiration to
write fiction had failed him, and indeed relatively few
stories by Asimov have seen first publication since 1957,
21
Rest of the Robots, p. 555.
141
22
when The Naked Sun was revised for book publication. But
the failure of inspiration in regard to the trilogy may have
been related more specifically to the difficulty in conceiv
ing a properly utopian conclusion. Within the context of
the fiction, a contemporary planet of the Outer Worlds can
hardly show already in existence a future C/Fe society,
integrating Earth's humane culture and the Spacers’ more
scientific way of life. Outside the world of fiction, the
problems of integrating machines into the life of twentieth-
century man cannot be solved by bringing two symbols
together. And if a man-machine partnership, like that of
Lije and Daneel, could be imaginatively extended to a
universal social reality on the capital planet Aurora, the
need on that world for that particular combination of man
and robot to solve a crime might be difficult to rational
ize.
In The Caves of Steel (as in the sequel) their
partnership is a meaningful, unifying device, since the
cultures which produced them are presented as polar oppo
sites. Through their partnership, Lije and Daneel manage
22
Rest of the Robots, pp. 555-556. In 1958, nine
stories credited to Asimov received first publication (some
of which presumably were written before 1958); 1959 through
1966, fifteen "new stories were published. In 1958, the
fifth of his novels for juveniles was published under the
pseudonym of "Paul French," in addition to his murder-
mystery, The Death Dealers (composition dates unknown). In
1966, his novelization of a science fiction movie, Fantastic
Voyage, was published and this book presumably was written
during the non-fiction period. See I[saac] A[simov], "Isaac
Asimov: A Bibliography," F&SF, October, 1966, pp. 36-45.
142
to surmount some of the negative aspects of their differ
ences, and to emphasize some of the positive aspects, thus
proving not only the efficacy of men and machines working
together but also the efficacy of communication in breaking
down prejudices.
The negative side of each culture is generally that
side which is seen dimly by the unenlightened outsider. To
the Spacers, New York City is dark, dirty, noisy, crowded,
and foul-smelling; claustrophobic, they can only enter the
City symbolically, via Daneel. To an Earthman, Spacetown
is blindingly bright, unnaturally clean, unprotected from
sun and air, devoid of familiar sounds and smells and phys
ical contact; agoraphobic, he could only enter the open
country symbolically, as Commissioner Enderby does, using a
robot to carry his murder-weapon. Earthmen are primitive
and regressive: they cultivate religion (as part of their
education), they study history (Lije intellectually, but the
Medievalists emotionally), and they have a tendency toward
violence (civil disturbances are endemic). Spacers are
machine-like and inhuman: they "worship" science, they
study sociology and social psychology (manipulating people
and machines in the present in order to manage the future,
but ignoring the past), and they are infuriatingly non
violent . The fecundity of the Cities, which continually
threatens to ruin them despite population controls, is
symbolized by the vast underground farms where they grow
143
yeast, a blindly growing, tasteless, undifferentiated,
living organism which supplies them with food. The steril
ity of the Outer Planets is suggested by the figure of the
robot, capable of thought and intellectual growth, but
xmable to reproduce or to feel, a perceptive, controlled,
individuated, non-living machine which supplies them with
services.
To a reader sharing science fiction's predilection
for scientific research, engineering marvels, technological
progress, and logical behavior, it would seem that the
positive aspects of Spacer culture are predominant. Since
the negative aspects were to be stressed in The Naked Sun,
Asimov could handle them mainly by implication in the first
book; indeed, most of the features of Spacer culture which
Lije finds objectionable are given favorable treatment by
the author. The reader is expected to approve of fresh air,
sunlight, private homes, robot servants, an enlightened
philosophy in lieu of religion, the scientific study of man,
eugenics, and the technological avoidance of violence. He
is expected to notice the treatment accorded to scientists
in the two cultures: robotocists (Dr. Fastolfe and the late
Dr. Sarton) act as spokesmen for the Spacers, whereas the
Earth roboticist (Dr. Gerrigel) and zymologist (Clousarr)
have no significantly favorable status among their peers.
Although Sarton is dead, Fastolfe is not autonomous, and the
task of "spokesman" to Earthmen is probably not coveted
144
among Spacers, the impression remains that Spacers respect
their scientists, whereas Earth does not reward those
concerned with either its present (food supply) or its
future (machines). Asimov underscores this impression by
his characterization: Fastolfe is fatherly, unemotional,
and professorial; Gerrigel is somewhat simpering, if knowl
edgeable and well-meaning; Clousarr is a stereotyped
belligerent conspirator, whose "professional" status is
chiefly a matter of vanity.
Via his exposure to this culture, Lije Baley comes
to understand some of his prejudices against it and in favor
of his own. On the most conscious level, he comes to appre
ciate the logic and the necessarily calm behavior of his
robot partner, and to allow for if not to approve of some
of the Spacers' different ways of doing things. Less
consciously he comes to feel less at ease in his old habits
and environment. Before he even meets Daneel, he thinks
favorably of New York buildings as "human hives" (p. 171)
and of the City as "a tremendous, self-contained cave of
steel and concrete" (p. 181). More negatively, on his way
to the appointment with Fastolfe, he regards the motorway
as "a blind and hollow worm" (p. 229). In Spacetown he
receives several shocks concerning differing interpretations
of what is "unclean"; his revulsions against speaking in
"Personal" (a community men's room) and eating "natural"
fruit, "straight from the dirt of a planet's soil" (p. 235)
145
are contrasted with the Spacers' need to avoid bacteria (in
the air, on his skin, from his breath). On his return to
the City, he discovers for the first time that "the City
smells" (p. 257) and by the end of the book he is daydream
ing about sun, fresh air, and open space (despite his normal
city-dweller1s phobia against all three). By the end of The
Naked Sun, he finally realizes that the Cities are "wombs"
from which man must escape, an insight which was inaccessi
ble to him until he had himself left Earth for his visit to
Solaria.
The breaking down of Spacer prejudices concerning
Earth culture presumably takes place rather tentatively, on
a completely conscious level, and behind the scenes. Our
only evidence of it emerges from those observations by
Daneel of human behavior to which Asimov draws our attention
and from the Spacers' withdrawal from Earth at the novel's
end, supposedly motivated by the assumption that the City
culture is not now hopelessly stagnant. Daneel transmits
countless pieces of data to the Spacers, from which they,
as we, can presumably construct cultural configurations with
positive significance. Three such configurations, whose
positive values might well have been unknown to the Spacers
before they dispatched their information-gathering device,
are the rights of the individual, the tradition of the
humanities, and the role of idle fun and games.
146
To Spacers, the right to privacy seems to mean the
right to isolate oneself, which their level of technology
and population makes possible. On Earth, privacy must be
defended by each person, individually and as part of the
group's mores. Thus one does not speak in Men's Personal,
or look at others there or in the community dining rooms,
or, unless one's job demands it, pry into others' business
in any way. Lije's perturbation, at Daneel's violation of
these taboos, and at the thought of "cerebroanalysis" as
the ultimate invasion of privacy, is duly recorded by Daneel
as unexpected behavior. But the rights of the individual go
beyond privacy, the free choice of mates, and personal
idiosyncracies such as eyeglasses, tobacco, and real windows
to the basic concept, alien to Spacer logic, of the right to
be irrational and even to be wrong. In acknowledging Lije's
mistaken accusations of Daneel, Fastolfe and later Daneel
patiently correct him as if the error were totally a
rational one. By the book's end, Daneel has learned enough
about irrationality to be able not only to understand but
also to "forgive," even to forgive a murderer his unwitting
and misguided act.
History, enduring art, and religion are three
aspects of the tradition of the humanities to which Earth
men, at least some of them, are irrationally committed, as
Daneel discovers. All three seem to be preserved mainly via
literature, that which is available on book-films. Lije is
147
well-versed in history, his hobby, some of which he has
gained from historical novels; other people show a primi
tivistic interest in historical artifacts, or copies and
reconstructions of historical artifacts, such as eyeglasses
and windows (Julius Enderby's particular fetishes). Art is
represented perhaps through architecture but most specif
ically through "romances" like the familiar story of "The
Wandering Londoner," who was supposedly lost in the subter
ranean motorways. The quality of the art may not be high,
but the preservation of it is important (in contrast to the
glimpse of Spacer art we get in The Naked Sun: abstract
"sculpture" with lights, to be obliterated and replaced at
the wave of a hand). Like religion, these remnants of
tradition are representative of an observation Lije makes
at one point: "Most Earthmen were Medievalists in one way
or another" (p. 180), yearning for a time less mechanized
and efficient, more oriented toward the simpler "human"
values.
The presence of religion, of the Judeo-Christian
variety, is recurrently invoked, although not in the form
of formal worship. Lije and Jessie first met at a
"Christmas party." Jessie's Medievalist meetings, with
their speeches and songs, their "sandwiches" and "juice,"
seem to be the City's nearest equivalent to a church
service. The preservation of the names Elijah and Jezebel
for 3,000 years beyond our present era would be unlikely
148
without some faint hint of Biblical tradition, and Jessie
even tends to identify superficially with what little she
knows of her Biblical namesake. For Lije, the Bible seems
to be primarily a work of literature, valued for its poetry,
historical insight, and moral guidance. He shows its
relevance as a moral guide to Daneel in an attempt to
explain Jessie's irrational behavior, his own sense of
mercy, and the concept (self-contradictory, to Daneel) of
something "higher than law." That the story he recites, of
Jesus pardoning the adulterous widow, impresses Daneel is
made clear by the robot's quoting the words "Go, and sin no
more" to Julius Enderby at the end of the book (p. 362).
The third configuration, idle activity, or actions
not deliberately planned and oriented toward a specific
goal, presumably seems just as irrational to Daneel and the
Spacers as the other two patterns, but also quite functional
in context. In his youth, Lije played games such as "tag"
or "follow the leader" on the moving strips, and such as
"hide-and-seek" with "guide rods" in the City's labyrinths,
never considering the usefulness of his play. Now his
experience "running the strips" helps him and Daneel to
escape pursuit, while his familiarity with "guide rods" not
only helps him locate Clousarr in Yeast-town without warning
him, but also arouses his suspicions of the "malfunctioning"
rod which leads Dr. Gerrigel to the robot Lije is accused
of having destroyed. His adult hobby of history, as
149
"useless" as childhood games, gives Lije an understanding
(helpful to the reader) of Medievalism, religion, and
Earthman-Spacer relations; his historical bent, in fact,
motivated Dr. Fastolfe to have him assigned to the case in
the first place. Lije's "idle" curiosity is essential in
his professional capacity, since a detective never knows
what random piece of information may prove meaningful in
combination with others. Yet his normal curiosity is
clouded at first by his prejudices toward and suspicions of
Daneel and the Spacers. He first becomes conscious of its
importance to him when he realizes that Daneel has no
curiosity, infers that the Spacers are similarly unimagina
tive, and guesses that they failed to see the clue he needs
to clear himself and to identify the murderer. Besides the
practical advantage his curiosity gives him, he recognizes
in it a basic human quality distinguishing man from machine,
a quality which should eventually enable Earthmen, and
Spacers, to break out of their social rigidity and steril
ity.
All of these aspects of Earth culture, insofar as
they are represented by observable behavior, are recorded
by Daneel and transmitted to Spacetown. The indirect effect
is to make the Spacers confident of the likelihood of
Earth's return to space exploration. The direct effect is
upon Daneel’s understanding, as he, like Lije, comes to
respect their partnership more with each lesson in
150
tolerating their differences.
Unlike Lije, Daneel is not actively suspicious of
his partner at the beginning; his mechanically passive
innocence, however, lacks the warmth expected of a human
partner. Despite increasing knowledge of the ability of
Daneel to remember, to reason, to act, Lije's emotional
revulsion forces him to continue to entertain irrational
suspicions; as his distrust appears to approach hysteria,
the illogic of it all compels Daneel to question his
partner's abilities. Having twice falsely accused Daneel,
Lije is taken aback by Daneel's tentative accusation of
Jessie; on the defensive, Lije begins to clear away his
prejudices against robots. Aware now of his need to feel
superior to the robot, he suppresses his resentment in order
to deal adequately with his job. Thus he eventually demon
strates his human superiority (use and control of the
irrational) as he comes to accept Daneel's mechanical
superiority. Reciprocally, Daneel comes to recognize that
logic and law alone are not sufficient for every problem.
Since man and machine can communicate and interact
in this way to solve a relatively simple problem like recon
structing a crime and finding a murderer, the implication
is that men and machines, utilizing each other's complemen
tary abilities, can eventually solve more complex problems
involving whole societies. But man and machine or man and
man cannot solve significant problems without communication,
151
especially between opposing viewpoints, which are essen
tially different frameworks for looking at things. And
communication is a key concept in this book, as in much
science fiction. Within the fiction, obviously, communica
tion is responsible for breaking down prejudices between
characters and between opposing factions. But on the level
of technique also, the book is designed for direct communi
cation from the author to his readers, communication of the
gospel of science to the non-scientist, communication to
the scientist of the need to consider humanity. The plots,
the mode of presentation, the structure, the level of
diction, and the character of the hero are all directed
toward this goal.
The mystery-detective plot in the foreground is
smoothly handled in terms of the conventions of the detec
tive story. All clues, leads, and possible pieces of
evidence are shared with the reader before the denouement,
and no deus ex machina, in the form of a futuristic device
not previously introduced, is invoked to solve the mystery.
In other words, Asimov is "fair to the reader" as the rules
23
of the detective-story demand. But the plot exists not
only for itself, but also to enable Asimov to use his
detective as utopian novelists have often used the figure
23
Holmes (above, note 12). See also Howard
Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the
Detective Story (New York and London, 1941), pp. 223-258.
152
of a stranger from another time or place, and as science
fiction writers have often used the doctor or dedicated
scientific researcher who must find the deterrent to the
menace from outer space. Lije Baley must learn, in order
to solve the case, information which he does not already
possess, and in the process, the reader can also be intro
duced, unobtrusively, to this unfamiliar world.
Baley is therefore a certain kind of detective, a
thinking man (perhaps too conscious of his thoughts to be
real), an educated man (as he must be to understand his
past, and to help us understand it), but in many ways an
essentially timid and conventional man, anxiety-ridden,
concerned for his family, and fully imbued with his cul
ture's insecurities. He is capable and determined in his
own line or work, once he can overcome his own prejudices,
but quite practical-minded in his own estimate of himself
and of his position in the world. These qualities make him
quite acceptable as a real person and at the same time as a
kind of "everyman" figure with whom the reader can comfort
ably identify. These qualities also make it quite believ
able that he becomes involved in the background plot of
Spacer-Earthman intrigue, both because he is a good
detective who delves into the background of his case, and
because he is the practical kind of man the Spacers need, on
whom to test their arguments in favor of emigration. His
growth as a person is also implicit in his character at the
153
beginning, not merely the result of the Spacers' manipula
tions. They only suggested the existence of alternatives;
Lije had to realize for himself the existence in himself of
untapped potential. His adaptation to unfamiliar customs
and ideas is subtly and gradually sketched, not as that of
an experimental animal going through his predetermined
paces, but as that of a human being rediscovering curiosity
and wonder, and triumphing over himself and his society's
rigid conventions and attitudes. Yet the contradictoriness
of his character even carries over into his exultant solu
tion at the end. He defeats, and then forgives, his friend
and superior, who has proven to be his enemy. He defeats
representatives of the Medievalists, with whom he has been
in sympathy, yet offers them a new, futuristic solution to
their frustrations. He defeats the Spacers, who had
callously wanted to close the case with him still in
trouble, invoking the aid of their own robot, with whom he
has not been on consistently good terms, but at the same
time he capitulates to their way of thinking about the need
for progress and the further development of the man-machine
relationship. Even in his victory over his conditioned
attitudes, he is still afraid to leave Earth and the protec
tion of the City's domes (he ultimately defeats his agora
phobia , but only in part, in The Naked Sun).
The background plot, as we have already seen,
involves a good deal of communication between Lije and the
154
Spacers. Although we can only infer their enlightenment,
and his is largely begun under the influence of a drug
increasing his suggestibility, the overall impression is of
stereotypes and prejudices being broken down, the most
important of which are Lije's fears of space and robots.
In his "everyman" capacity, then, Lije may well be consid
ered as the average American being won over by the arguments
of science fiction. Thus the secondary plot, too, is a
definite tool of communication.
The use of the detective, and the detective-plot, is
admirably suited to the mode of presentation generally pre
ferred by science fiction writers of the "second genera
tion," whom Asimov sees as writers of "social science
fiction." Following the lead of Robert A. Heinlein, who is
regarded by many as the master of this technique, Asimov
does not detail every aspect of life in his characters'
world before getting on with his story, nor does he inter
rupt the narrative with lengthy explanations which break
the tenuous illusion of future reality. Since he is tell
ing a story, not blueprinting a utopia, he introduces
through the action itself, or through short qualifying
statements, as much background information as the reader
needs at the moment. In some cases, where an unexplained
A /
On Heinlein, see Seekers (above, note 1), pp. 187-
212; Knight (above, note 15), pp. 76-89; Alexei Panshin,
Heinlein in Dimension: A Critical Analysis (Chicago, 1968).
155
point is an established science fiction convention, he lets
the reader familiarize himself with futuristic devices or
terms through context alone. Thus the communication is
somewhat below the surface, and the all-important background
or setting seems almost to emerge of its own accord.
Because we are mainly limited to the consciousness
of Lije, presented by a slightly more knowledgeable third-
person narrator, we have a definite focus on the action, not
a diffuse panorama of an unfamiliar world. The limitation
to one viewpoint limits us also to his knowledge; thus the
reader is kept guessing along with Lije as to the Spacers'
real motives and the identity of the killer. If we are
closed off from his mind at the moment of recognition, this
is a legitimate trick of staging for the denouement, since
everything needed to deduce the killer's identity has been
presented to us. The third-person narrator telling us about
Lije fills in many details presumably known to Lije which
may not be in his conscious thoughts at the moment, thus
adding to our knowledge of Lije's psychological, social,
and physical environment. This results in a tremendously
compressed narrative style, introducing us to many unfamil
iar things in a small space. Thus in the first chapter
alone we become acquainted with the following bits of
observation, information, and opinion: the tobacco short
age, the problems of robot-caused unemployment, the fatuity
of Earth's primitive robots, the type of computer used in
156
the Police Department, the City-dweller's struggle for
status, the rarity of such old-fashioned devices as windows
and spectacles, the invasion of privacy which a window rep
resents to Lije, the average Earthman's unfamiliarity with
rain or other natural phenomena, the primitivism of the cult
of Medievalists, the differences in the way of living in
Spacetown, the exaggerated cleanliness of the Spacers, the
recent acts of violence in the City, the existence of other
Cities besides New York, Police Commissioner Enderbj^'s
sentimentality, the Spacers' lack of emotion, the difficult
political situation between Earthmen and Spacers, and Lije's
"special relationship" with the Commissioner. In addition,
we are presented with the opening gambit of the plot, i.e.
that Lije, in taking on the murder case, must also accept a
Spacer robot as partner and live with him, and all of this
is accomplished in ten pages, or about 3,500 words.
The chapter structure seems intended to demonstrate
to the reader that Asimov has nothing to hide, i.e. he is
neither withholding necessary evidence about the crime and
information about the background, nor is he indulging in any
subtle literary maneuvers which might please a literary
critic but deceive the average reader of science fiction.
Each chapter is not only full of information, but also
arranged in terms of action so that it has its own develop
ment and climax, its own identity as a discrete unit
complete with jejune, pulp-style subtitle (from
157
"Conversation with a Commissioner," Chapter 1, to "End of
an Investigation," Chapter 18). Each chapter is generally
a chronological unit, contrasted with the next in terms of
setting, mood, and action, as well. The book is unabashedly
a serial, too, with each installment ending on a melodra
matic and suspenseful accusation (the first two of which are
false), thus appealing quite openly to the reader for whom
25
only the "action plot" is of interest. Finally, the novel
is also a part of a trilogy and, while the allusions made by
Lije and others to other worlds and their customs are very
much a part of this particular book, they also point beyond
it to the sequel or sequels.
Asimov’s prose style is superior to that of many
writers of pulp fiction, but here too he seems to be aiming
at a mass audience. Aside from the few dozen terms describ
ing future technology, most of which are quickly explained,
his vocabulary is simple and familiar, even trite. His
sentences are relatively uncomplicated and generally cast
in the active voice, resulting in a breathless, but not
staccato, narrative pace. His language is relatively full
of imagery and analogies, making the most unfamiliar science
fictional conventions immediately accessible. The apparent
impersonality of his style, a common feature of much science
fiction, is modified by a serious, earnest, and optimistic
2 5
Norman Friedman, "Forms of the Plot," in The
Theory of the Novel, ed. Philip Stevick (New York, 1967),
p. 158.
158
9 f i
tone which is characteristic of Asimov's fiction.
Dialogue predominates over exposition and narrative
in The Caves of Steel, as is more typical of detective
stories than science fiction, thus giving us more of the
feeling of what it is like to live in that world, and less
of the awe and wonder an innocent stranger or a highly
impressed and omniscient third-person narrator might well
create by stressing description. Thus, too, Asimov can
show us more and tell us less of his characters' behavior,
letting the characters tell us, by act and speech, what he
advocates in the way of progress and decency. The dialogue
is usually introduced by the word "said," frequently modi
fied by adverbial stage directions establishing the mood of
the speaker which may not be clear from his speech. Such a
reliance on adverbs, as a kind of verbal shorthand substi
tuting for precise and effective dialogue, is often overdone
in pulp fiction, but Asimov's use of this device is seldom
obtrusive.
The dialogue itself is generally suited to the
character and whatever emotion there is in the situation.
Even the one-dimensional characters are appropriately
characterized by their speech patterns, including the
fatherly Fastolfe, the blustering Clousarr, the simpering
^William Atheling, Jr. [James Blish], The Issue at
Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science-Fiction,
ed. James Blish (Chicago, 1964), pp. 29-30.
159
Gerrigel, the timid Jessie, and less successfully the
stereotyped adolescent, Bentley Baley, and the caricatured
bureaucrat, Julius Enderby. The most important characters,
whose conversation is most often before us, Lije and Daneel,
are also the most recognizable by their speech patterns.
Daneel speaks a slightly stilted, awkward, grammatically
perfect English which just misses being idiomatically
correct, as when he offers refreshment to Lije in Spacetown:
"These are the fruits of natural plant life grown on Aurora.
I suggest you try this kind. It is called an apple and is
reputed to be pleasant" (p. 234). Everything he says must
be letter-perfect, including the way he addresses humans:
Lije is "Elijah" to Daneel, and he hesitates to use the
diminutive "Jessie." Lije, by contrast, is perfectly com
fortable with the idiomatic language, frequently on a level
of colloquialism which is confusing to the literal-minded
Daneel. Baley frequently uses the approach of the tradi
tional "tough cop"; somewhat effective with Clousarr, it is
a bit inappropriate with Jessie, and completely useless with
Daneel, for whom the pose's artificial emotionlessness
carries no meaning to supplement the actual words involved.
The conventional tendency of dialogue in detective
fiction to communicate far more information than speech
carries in real life is particularly appropriate to Asimov’s
purpose. Content in general is more important than style in
The Caves of Steel, and every aspect of Asimov's technique
160
seems dedicated to communicating content in as direct a
manner as possible. The possibility of clear, direct
communication is itself a part of the content, not merely
in an implicit way, inferred from the erasure of prejudices,
but also explicitly, as in Asimov's assumptions within the
fiction concerning future linguistic change. At one point,
Lije's thoughts include the following sentence: "English
might not be the 'English' of Shakespeare or Churchill, but
it was the final potpourri that was current over all the
continents and, with some modification, on the Outer Worlds
as well" (p. 266). Even allowing for the tendency of
communications technology to standardize language and retard
change, such a situation after 3,000 years in a civilization
of fifty-odd planets not in constant contact with one
another is at least improbable, from a linguistic point of
view. The bias for English as the standard tongue is an
established convention, even in the science fiction of other
countries, and the necessity for a common language between
characters in a work of literature is not peculiar to
science fiction at all. But the wishful thinking which lies
behind the science fictional assertion of one common tongue
in the future is, I suspect, related to the scientist's
desire to communicate across international or interlingual
borders as freely with words as with mathematical and tech
nical symbols.
161
As a writer of science fiction as well as a scien
tist, Asimov is also concerned with communicating the
missionary gospel of progress to a non-scientific and
non-science-fictional audience beyond the science fiction
community. To this end, I believe, not merely because such
a tour de force was a challenge to the craftsman in him,
Asimov has attempted to amalgamate the detective story with
the science fiction novel. In addition, the combination of
reservations about over-reliance on scientism with the
optimistic anticipation of perfect communication and man-
machine progress, while it may well represent the author's
personal sense of balance between the sciences and the
humanities, also seems calculated as a message of caution
to the zealous prophets of science, and as an attempt to
show both the masses and the literati that science fiction
isn't quite as wild and radical as they may believe.
As a tour de force, The Caves of Steel is a remark
able feat of craftsmanship. As a work of science fiction,
it is an unqualified success. As a piece of literature,
fairly narrow in scope and limited in aim, it is an adequate
entertainment. It communicates its message clearly, but
without preaching--not that space is the answer to the
population explosion, nor that the future is necessarily
utopian or dystopian, but that what we call progress, expan
sion, or growth is essential to the survival, for good or
for bad, of civilization and of the individual man. In
162
addition, the book makes its hypothetical, future, its phys
ical and social setting, a felt and remembered experience,
long after the details of the murder investigation are
forgotten.
CHAPTER V
THEODORE STURGEON: MORE THAN HUMAN (1953)
In his first book review column, which appeared in
the July, 1957 issue of F&SF’s short-lived companion maga
zine, Venture Science Fiction, Theodore Sturgeon declared
that he personally did not read science fiction for its
science, its fiction, or its entertainment value, since all
three could be obtained elsewhere and better. Referring to
himself in third person, he wrote: "he reads s f [sic]
because of its expansion of the known--its thrusting back
of horizons. S f has no inhibitions when it penetrates or
extrapolates or makes extensions. S f is bold and unabashed
and not embarrassed by its speculations. This is the
quality which, when added to good fiction, makes good s f;
but this wonderful reach of the field is its heart.This
statement would not seem exceptionable coming from any
writer developed by John Campbell around 1940, but Sturgeon
2
is far from a typical Campbell product. Although he was
^Venture, July, 1957, p. 78.
2
Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of
Modern Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966),
pp. 229-248. See also Judith Merril, "Theodore Sturgeon,"
F&SF, September, 1962. pp. 46-55, and James Blish, "Theodore
Sturgeon s Macrocosm, F&SF, September, 1962, pp. 42-45.
163
164
discovered by Campbell, who bought most of his stories of
fantasy and science fiction in the Forties, Sturgeon seldom
wrote the "pure" science fiction which he saw in Campbell's
own space operas; "narrative which could not occur without
3
its science." And since the rise in literary quality of
Astounding's competition since 1949-50, only one story of
. . 4
Sturgeon s has appeared in Campbell s magazine.
Sturgeon's understanding of such key terms in the
above passage as "extrapolation" and "good fiction" is
quite different from that of Campbell, for whom the kinds of
content and of story-telling manner are rather limited.'* In
another short essay, dealing largely with the mechanics of
extrapolation and the study of science in science fiction,
Sturgeon asserted (giving credit to Murray Leinster) that
extrapolation could also be applied to people; understanding
a character in terms of his responses to real life situa
tions, one should be able to "extrapolate" what his behavior
would be in a less likely situation. On other occasions,
3
Theodore Sturgeon, "On Hand . . . Off Hand:
Books," Venture, November, 1957, p. 82.
^"Sources of bibliographical information include
indexes (above, Chapter I, note 35), personal collections,
and Sam Moskowitz, Fantasy and Science Fiction by Theodore
Sturgeon," F&SF, September, 1962, pp. 56-61.
■*See John W. Campbell, Jr., "Science Fact and
Science Fiction," Writer, August, 1964, pp. 26-27. See
also Chapter I, above, pp. 25-28.
^Theodore Sturgeon, "The Other IF," IF, May, 1962,
pp. 107-112.
165
he has stated opinions far from Campbell's concerning the
subject matter and function of science fiction. "With the
admission of psychology and political criticism to legiti
mate s f, all things acting upon human beings, and acted
upon by them, fall within s f's province,"^ "S f is what
any f is--an expression, by the creative mind, of human
g
values and human experience." And in a personal note to
readers, after he had been chosen Guest of Honor for the
Twentieth World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in
1962, Sturgeon acknowledged his debt to the science fiction
community for enabling him to write in a way which was not
particularly bound to science fictional techniques at all:
I know why world science fiction . . . called me up.
It's because I have a great facility with words, an
odd kind of detachment, and an unabashed way of
putting them together. These things all put into
one word make a thing called Talent. A better word
for it is Gift. . . .
The reason that it's so hard, in these special
izing times, to say what sf [sic] is about is that
it isn't about anything--it's about everything. It
begins at the most remote horizons of any other form
of expression except, possibly, poetry. As such, it
is big enough for a talent--a gift--like mine. Sf
has been the only place for it, and what I'm most
grateful for is that sf coexisted with its birth and
growth.
^Theodore Sturgeon, "On Hand . . . Off Hand:
Books," Venture, January, 1958, p. 78.
O
Theodore Sturgeon, "On Hand . . . Off Hand:
Books," Venture, March, 1958, p. 68.
166
The Gift knows where it wants to be. It is at
home there.°
Despite his professed liking for pure science
fiction, for extrapolation based on scientific studies,
Sturgeon's own science fiction is frequently based on
impossible or incredible assumptions which have little or
no "scientific" stature. His real starting points often
seem to be things about which he, and many people, have
strong emotional commitments, things that we very much want
or fear to be true. And his extrapolations, from present
or future situations, from bases in technology or fantasy,
involve at times extremely arbitrary plots, designed more
for an aesthetic than a realistic pattern. Unrealistic in
origin though they may be, many of Sturgeon's stories and
characters do have, within the fictional world, a vivid
reality rarely equalled in science fiction.
Besides an uncounted number of non-fantasy stories
(usually published in detective, adventure, and other pulp
magazines), Sturgeon has published over one hundred stories
of fantasy and science fiction.^ More stories by Sturgeon
have been anthologized than stories by any other science
fiction writer but Isaac Asimov, and nine collections of
Q
Theodore Sturgeon, "Most Personal," IF, November,
1962, p. 6.
^See above, note 4.
167
his tales have been issued."^ In addition to these books,
seven novels by Sturgeon have been published.
Two of his novels were potboilers, written for quick
sale, the pseudo-historical I, Libertine (1956, by
"Frederick R. Ewing"), and a "novelization" of the motion
picture, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). The other
five were original works, extending the borderlines of
science fiction, imaginative projections dealing with love
and sex, emotions and perversions, symbiosis (biological
interdependence, like that between the shark and the pilot
fish) and syzygy (union between related things, which with
Sturgeon comes to mean a kind of emotional and mental
interpretation, like the intercourse of Milton's angels).
The Dreaming Jewels (1950) concerns, among other things,
syzygy and crystalline life forms. The Cosmic Rape (1958)
envisions the attempt by an alien "group-mind" to take over
Earth; all Earthmen become one and take over the alien,
instead. In both cases, the story is told mainly from the
standpoint of an outcast, an "isolato," such as figures in
many of Sturgeon's tales. Venus Plus X (1960) contrasts
1: L W. R. Cole, A Checklist of Science Fiction
Anthologies ([New YorkJ, 1964), p. v. Concerning collec
tions of Sturgeon's stories, personal holdings confirm the
bibliography in Three to the Highest Power: Bradbury,
Oliver, Sturgeon, ed. William FT Nolan (New York, l9o8),
pp. 105-108. The collections are as follows: Without
Sorcery (1948), E Pluribus Unicorn (1953), A Way Home
(1955), Caviar (1955), A Touch of Strange (1958), Aliens 4
(1959), Beyond (I960), Sturgeon in Orbit (1964), Starshine
(1966).
168
America's changing sexual mores with those appropriate to a
"utopia" of physiological hermaphrodites. In Some of Your
Blood (1961), Sturgeon manages to make of a traditional
fantasy theme, vampirism, a novel of borderline science
fiction, by making it into a scientific (psychoanalytic)
case-history. Not well received, it was one of his last
efforts in science fiction to date; except for a very few
stories, his connection with the field has been primarily
through science articles (as Feature Editor for IF, 1961-64)
and book review columns (in the National Review, since
1961).12
The novel usually considered his best, More than
Human (1953), won the International Fantasy Award for 1954,
13
against unusually strong competition. Ostensibly an
examination of various kinds of e.s.p., it is also very
much about love and community; as James Blish has noted,
Sturgeon's telepathy might better be called "telempathy.
12
Sturgeon's brief articles on science and specula
tion appeared in every bimonthly issue of IF from July, 1961
through March, 1964, according to the MIT Index (see above,
note 4); I have so far been able to confirm only ten of
these seventeen issues. In National Review, Sturgeon's book
review column appears irregularly; the first appearance was
September 23, 1961, the nineteenth May 30, 1967.
13
Seekers (above, note 2), p. 244. Other winners,
1951-1955 and 1957, were: Earth Abides by George R.
Stewart, Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier, City by
Clifford Simak, A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn,
and Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, according to
Moskowitz, Seekers, pp. 244, 422, and personal letter.
■^Blish (above, note 2), p. 44.
169
Reviewed in some general periodicals, it got a fair
reception. Maurice Richardson in the New Statesman and
Nation said Sturgeon's psychological fantasies interested
him as a sociological phenomenon, but he found the author's
15
style "maddeningly turgid" and his science "nonexistent."
Kingsley Amis in the Spectator regretted that Sturgeon had
not fully imagined a "composite individual" in his homo
gestalt, giving us rather "a lot of people milling about
16
[and not] doing anything." Fletcher Pratt praised the
book in Saturday Review: "As far as I know, Mr. Sturgeon
is the first writer to produce a plausible theory of how
17
[psi powers] could work instead of merely saying they do."
Villiers Gerson wrote in the New York Times: "Their adven
tures, their growing realization of their power and its
responsibilities, aided by a poetic, moving prose and a
deeply examined raison d'etre, make this . . . one of the
best science fiction novels of the year.
In the science fiction community, Sturgeon and More
than Human were highly acclaimed. P. Schuyler Miller in
Astounding compared Sturgeon favorably to Ray Bradbury,
15
Review by Maurice Richardson, New Statesman and
Nation, October 30, 1954, pp. 554-556.
16
Review by Kingsley Amis, Spectator, September 17,
1954, p. 350.
"^Review by Fletcher Pratt, Saturday Review,
August 7, 1954, pp. 14-15.
18
Review by Villiers Gerson, New York Times,
November 22, 1953, p. 34.
170
saying "His [Sturgeon's] stories are always about real
people, whose basic trouble is that they are only people,
19
with the limitations as well as the powers of people."
Groff Conklin in Galaxy reacted similarly: "It is something
of a relief to find a piece of science fiction that is
concerned with odd but astonishingly real people and with
parapsychology maturely used [rather] than with hopeless
20
mobs and violent disaster." The editor of F&SF, as "H. H.
Holmes," hesitantly used the words "profundity" and "great
ness" in the New York Herald-Tribune Book Review, and as
"Anthony Boucher," praised the book on several levels: "In
its crystal-clear prose, its intense human warmth and its
depth of psychological probing, it is a first-rate
"straight" novel; its ingenious use of telepathy, psycho
kinesis, and other fpsif powers make it admirable science-
fantasy; and the adroit plotting and ceaseless surge of
21
action qualify it as a distinguished suspense story."
Damon Knight, although he called Sturgeon "the most accom
plished technician this field has produced, bar nobody, not
even Bradbury," apparently felt unequal to the task of
describing the book; after two brief quotations and a
19
Review by P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding, June,
1954, pp. 144-145.
20
Review by Groff Conklin, Galaxy, January, 1954,
pp. 128-129.
21
Review by H. H. Holmes, New York Heraid-Tribune
Book Review, November 22, 1953, p. 19. Review by Anthony
Boucher, F&SF, February, 1954, p. 93.
171
reference to its genesis as a novelette, he concluded:
"It's a single story that goes from here to there like a
catenary arc, and hits one chord like the Last Trump when it
gets there, and stops. There's nothing more to be said
about it, except that it's the best and only book of its
22
kind." Obviously, there is more to be said about it, not
all of which is wildly complimentary; it may well be "the
best and only book of its kind," but that begs the question
of just what kind of book it is.
A novel of about 75,000 words, More than Human is
divided into three subtitled sections, roughly equal in
length, each separated from the others by a number of years,
and each subdivided into numerous episodes separated only by
23
spacing. It tells the story of the combining, and the
growing to maturity of a superhuman "gestalt"-being, whose
unique and disparate members are "children" with parapsycho-
logical talents.^
22
Damon Knight, In Search of Wonder: Essays on
Modern Science Fiction, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1967), p. TT5.
23
Theodore Sturgeon, More than Human (New York,
1953). All page references in the text are to this edition.
This is the Ballantine paperback edition, which has recently
been brought back into print. I have not been able to
locate a copy of the hard-cover edition by Farrar, Strauss,
and Young.
0 /
Moskowitz claims Sturgeon's indebtedness to
"gestalt philosophy," Seekers (above, note 2), p. 244.
Sturgeon himself suggests something similar in the text,
when Gerry lifts the term "gestalt from the mind of the
psychiatrist, Stern (pp. 142-143). My readings in gestalt
psychology, however, have turned up little that is explic
itly related to the novel. Some relevant quotes
172
Part One, "The Fabulous Idiot," introduces us, by-
means of impressionistic sketches of loosely related events,
to the original members of the gestalt, before and after
they have been gathered together by Lone, an "idiot" with
hypnotic and telepathic talents. Lone's coming to aware
ness, via a bizarre, unfulfilled, telepathic love affair
with Evelyn Kew, repressed fifteen-year-old daughter of a
sexually obsessed maniac, is related in the beginning.
After Lone, who was almost killed by Kew, has been nursed
back to health and "miraculously" educated by a farmer
couple named Prodd, we are introduced to Gerry Thompson and
Hip Barrows, who will dominate Parts Two and Three, and we
are given a glimpse of Evelyn's sister, Alicia, who will
play a major role in Part Two. The nucleus of the gestalt
is soon formed, as the telekinetic Janie makes friends with
the teleporting Negro twins, Bonnie and Beanie, and the
three escape to the woods. Lone joins them, then adds the
mongoloid idiot son of the Prodds, Baby, who has a brain
like a computer, and the group begins to "blesh" (minimal
follow. "The whole is more than the sum of its parts,"
Raymond Holder Wheeler, The Science of Psychology: An
Introductory Study (New York, 1929), p. Ib! "LGestalt
psychology offers a] general thesis concerning the primacy
of wholeness in mental life," John Elmgren, Gestalt
Psychology: A~Survey and Some Contributions, in Goteborgs
Hogskoles Xrsskrift, 44 (Goteborg, 1938), p. 4. "A config
uration cannot be considered as built up out of the parts'
of which it consTsts, if these parts are regarcTed as inde-
pendent and- self-contaTneH elements," Aron Gurwitsch, The'
Field of Consciousness, In Duquesne Studies, Psychological
Series,~~2 (Pittsburgh, 1964) , p. 114.
173
definition: blend and mesh), but with Lone at its head the
gestalt is no more than a "fabulous idiot."
Part Two, "Baby is Three," was originally published
in Galaxy as a compact and tightly unified novelette, with
slight but significant differences from the present
25
version. With the aid of the psychotherapist Stern, the
fifteen-year-old Gerry relives in one afternoon the momen
tous experiences of the seven years since Lone picked him
up out of the gutter and added him to the group. Seeking
the reason why he killed Miss Kew (Alicia), their "govern
ess," Gerry probes his memory, encountering a great deal of
resistance at the phrase "Baby is three." Three years
earlier, with Lone dead, Gerry had brought the orphaned
group to Miss Kew, who Lone had said would care for them,
and that phrase, we discover, had loosed a flood of her
memories, concerning her relations with Lone and her
attempts to help him understand the creature of which he was
a part, into Gerry's mind. Overcoming the mental block
which has made him repress his identity and that of the
gestalt, Gerry now realizes that he has killed Miss Kew
because she was smothering the gestalt with love and kind
ness. Defying Stern's warning that he is not "cured," that
without a sense of morality to guide him, his feelings of
guilt and loneliness may make him psychopathic, Gerry
2 5
Theodore Sturgeon, "Baby is Three," Galaxy,
October, 1952, pp. 4-62.
174
"calls" Bonnie to erase Stern's tape recorder (with advice
from Baby), and proceeds to erase hypnotically from Stern's
mind all memory of the afternoon's discussion.
In Part Three, "Morality," the plot device of
restoring a memory is repeated, but this time from outside
the person's mind. Janie helps Hip Barrows recover from
the hypnotic commands implanted by Gerry, to whom Hip's
chance discovery of and search for the group constituted a
threat some years before. After reconstructing his past,
Hip learns of Janie's connection with that same group, and
with Gerry (whom he knew as Major Thompson), and goes with
her to the old Kew residence, the home and prison of the
gestalt, which is now pathologically withdrawn under Gerry's
leadership. After some melodramatic scuffling, Hip succeeds
in making Gerry "ashamed," and the gestalt, having come to
recognize through Hip its kinship with homo sapiens, is
welcomed by the mental voices of the community or race of
homo gestalt.
The fiction in More than Human far outweighs the
science, as might be expected from Sturgeon's definition of
a good science fiction story: "a story built around human
beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which
would not have happened at all without its scientific
2 6
content." The science fictions, or science fictional
2 f t
Sturgeon's definition is quoted in William
Atheling, Jr. [James Blish], The Issue at Hand: Studies in
Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction (Chicago, 1964),
175
themes, are presented in terms of individual, personal
problems. The extrapolation is taken to a point of almost
utopian perfection, where wish-fulfillment seems more
determining than practical possibilities. Setting and tone,
structure and style all contribute to a kind of fairy-tale
form, in which science and logic are almost out of place.
And the whole work, although it communicates on the popular,
superficial level of most pulp science fiction, also pulses
with a kind of literary "feel" associated before the mid-
Fifties only with Ray Bradbury, Alfred Bester, and Sturgeon.
The scientific basis of More than Human is rather
fuzzy at best. The "science" of parapsychology is still a
rather controversial research area, as are spiritualism and
psychical research in general. Over sixty years since the
Rhines began their studies at Duke University, conclusive
proof has not yet been offered even of the existence of
27
extra-sensory perception (e.s.p.). The psi phenomena
described in the novel, moreover, have been extrapolated to
p. 14. This definition is also referred to, in a shortened
version, in Robert A. Heinlein, "Science Fiction: Its
Nature, Faults and Virtues," in Basil Davenport et al., The
Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism,
rev. (Chicago, 1964), pT 19. It is implicit in some of
Sturgeon's writings (above, notes 1, 6-8), as well, but I
have not been able to locate it explicitly in his writing.
^See especially C. E. M. Hansel, ESP: A Scientific
Evaluation (New York, 1966), which, besides demolishing most
of the "evidence" presented by others, also contains a good,
brief, selective bibliography on the subject, including
writings by proponents as well as opponents.
176
a point far beyond the meager findings laboriously arrived
at in the parapsychology laboratory. At least as far beyond
today's alleged laboratory evidence of e.s.p. as another
science fiction staple, travel to the stars, is beyond the
Wright Brothers' first flight, the talents of Sturgeon's
characters are perfected to a degree which may never be
achievable except in literature. Gerry explains this to
Stern, toward the end of Part Two, borrowing Stern's
terminology to do so:
I'm the central ganglion of a complex organism which
is composed of Baby, a computer; Bonnie and Beanie,
teleports; Janie, telekineticist; and myself, tele
path and central control. There isn't a single
thing about any of us that hasn't been documented:
the teleportation of the Yogi, the telekinetics of
some gamblers, the idio-savant mathematicians, and
most of all, the so-called poltergeist, the moving
about of household goods through the instrumentation
of a young girl. Only in this case every one of my
parts delivers at peak performance. (pp. 142-143)
Although each of these talents has been documented,
the documentation--which is often full of exaggeration and
fraud--does not indicate an ease and facility comparable to
what is exhibited here. Lone, and later Gerry, can reach
into someone else's mind at will and select whatever infor
mation and vocabulary he wants, or implant an all but
irresistible hypnotic command, with no visible effort except
that, to the victim, it appears as if the telepath's irises
are about to spin. Janie's telekinesis (parapsychologists
usually call it psycho-kinesis or PK), although it has to
be trained and disciplined, enables her not only to throw
177
things (as any good poltergeist should be able to do) but
also to create rather subtle and delicate effects, with no
apparent effort other than a momentary look of concentra
tion. The ability Bonnie and Beanie have, of being able to
travel long distances instantaneously, is so casual a
possession they are not even aware at first of having willed
it. And Baby's computer-speed thinking reveals no expendi
ture of energy at all, outwardly, although his mode of
communication does involve physical movements.
Materialistic theory, unable to cope at all with
precognition or communication with the dead, is also
extremely uncomfortable with the concepts of clairvoyance
and teleportation, barely allowing the possibility of mental
energy (involving electro-chemical reactions) sufficient to
allow wordless communication or the movement of small
objects. As a result, many scientists--like the biologist,
Herman J. Muller, contributing to a symposium on science
fiction in The Humanist magazine--would banish most if not
all e.s.p. from probability-conscious science fiction to
28
the purely literary realm of fantasy.
Not sharing the preference of many writers and fans
for "pure" science fiction, Sturgeon is conscious neverthe
less of the need to overcome the reader's disbelief of the
improbable. He does so, however, primarily by literary,
28
Hermann J. Muller, "Science Fiction as an Escape,"
The Humanist, XVII, 6 (1957), 333-346.
178
rather than by "scientific" (science fictional) means.
Sturgeon by no means assumes a lawless universe--psi powers
in More than Human are subject to rules and limitations--but
he does not feel it incumbent upon him to give a detailed
explanation of the laws of nature which apply to his
fictional world. Little or no explicit rationalization is
offered for his characters1 ability to defy natural laws
apparently operable in the real world; he merely demon
strates their abilities in action, as they appear both from
outside and from within the characters' minds.
Sturgeon does not attempt to anchor his fantasy in
the basic assumptions of science; empiricism, determinism,
and relativism are all somewhat subverted in this novel.
Psi powers may be an objectively observable reality in the
fictional world, but they are not subjected to or described
in terms of quantitative measurement, and their objective
reality is subordinated to their subjective reality, with
which empiricism is not qualified to deal. Naturalistic
determinism is invoked, in a way: the children's loneliness
and rejection, resulting from some kind of maltreatment, is
implied as a causal factor--necessary but not sufficient--
in their parapsychological development. But loneliness and
rejection are at least partly subjective, Sturgeon indi
cates, relieved by positive social interaction (love,
affection, belonging). And the real determinism of the book
is teleological: the goal of maturity, explicit in the
179
characters and implicit in the structure of events, requires
the success of the gestalt. Scientific relativism is
operable in that each individual gestalt is regarded as an
experiment of nature; the race (homo gestalt) welcomes each
success, but it destroys each failure which does not
dissolve or destroy itself. Moral relativism is more
heavily stressed, especially in the character of Gerry, for
whom the gestalt is largely a means to his playing the role
of superman. Having no respect for merely human beings,
laws, or institutions, he feels no obligation to use his
power for good, nor does he even recognize a distinction
between "good" and "evil" until his final confrontation with
Hip.
The basic goals of science, prediction and control,
are clearly present in More than Human, but they are also
basic desires of every man, which fantasy can achieve in
literature where science cannot in the real world. The
lesson of science, that we can achieve what we want only if
we accept and take advantage of how the world is really
constructed (i.e. not in accordance with our wishes alone)
seems not to matter here. The ease with which certain
"elect" persons achieve goals unreachable in the world
outside the fiction is reminiscent of the ease with which
seduction is managed in works of pornography. Sturgeon
avoids intellectual pornography to some extent, however, by
making his characters suffer and struggle in other ways,
180
and by leading them toward a sense of ethical values. By
treating psi powers as other writers treat mechanical tech
nology, Sturgeon even avoids drifting completely beyond the
borders of science fiction. By showing psi powers at work,
as a matter of "fact," not of mystery, and by showing the
skepticism of other characters overcome in the novel, he
undermines our disbelief somewhat, even though we know he
is using the literary equivalent of a conjuror's tricks.
Since he does not refute the basic assumptions of science,
and since the world he displays is still an orderly one, we
are not so much led to a belief in "disguised spiritism,"
as Muller charges, as we are reminded that there may be
charges, as we are reminded that there may be wonders in
29
the world which are still unexplained.
The concept of a gestalt being, by which Sturgeon
extends these marvels still further, seems to belong exclu
sively to science fiction, and even there his predecessors
were generally content to refer vaguely to an alien "group
mind" or "hive mentality," as in Clarke's Childhood's End.~^
By contrast, Sturgeon has imagined a composite entity of
^Miiller, p. 338.
30
Henry Kuttner, however, wrote a series of stories
in the late Forties about a strange hillbilly family, whose
members all had bizarre talents, and who occasionally worked
together. Two of these stories were reprinted recently:
"Cold War," in Henry Kuttner, Bypass to Otherness (New
York, 1961); "See You Later," in Henry Kuttner, Return to
Otherness (New York, 1962).
181
individual human beings, each of whom has his own distinct
problems and abilities, which he preserves at the same time
that he consciously cooperates with others, not as a matter
of instinct, but as a matter of social and emotional inter
action. Thus the author makes possible a very human kind of
conflict between individuals, complementing each person's
inner conflict between superior powers and normal human
emotions.
By choosing children as the bearers of abnormal
powers, Sturgeon is following another established conven
tion; superchildren have frequently appeared in science
fiction, their powers evoking fear as their psychological
31
state arouses pity. Since it is primarily their sensa
tions in which Sturgeon is interested, rather than the
sensational values for which their powers can be exploited,
we can expect some variation on the convention for the sake
of believable character. The old stereotype of childhood
innocence and purity is incomplete, although it is alluded
to in Baby's eternal youth, in Lone's mental childishness,
in the enforced innocence of fifteen-year-old Evelyn Kew,
whose telepathic love call brings Lone to some degree of
consciousness, and in the dwindling of the twins' ability
to communicate with Baby as they grow older. But the
destructiveness of childhood is also apparent, in the
31
See, for further illustration of science fiction's
use of children, Children of Wonder, ed. William Tenn
(New York, 1953).
182
careless mischief of the twins, in the hatred of Janie for
her playgirl mother, in the mindless malevolence of an
urchin whom Hip and Janie happen upon at a carnival, and in
the behavior and character of the whole gestalt under the
leadership of Gerry.
As children, of course, they are not fully in
control of themselves, or of their powers. Their emotional
needs, which are frustrated by a hostile or indifferent
world, have in their cases enabled them to encourage rather
than inhibit their parapsychological powers, but have also
built up in the children a high degree of suspicion and
hostility toward strangers. In order for the whole gestalt
to approach the sum of its parts, the parts must come to
accept each other, and if the gestalt is to be more than a
simple addition of talents, the individuals possessing
those talents must also come to accept themselves, and the
outside world which frustrated them in the first place.
This integration, which takes place gradually, provides the
novel with its basic pattern; a kind of Bildungsroman, it
shows the education and the coming to maturity of a single
member, not of homo sapiens, but of homo gestalt.
As they grow, relatively secure in each other's
company, the children gradually perfect their technique as
individuals, and the total powers of the gestalt are also
increased. Bonnie and Beanie learn to control their
travelling with precision, though they never overcome the
183
impossibility of taking anything (including clothes) with
them. Janie learns to handle extremely difficult and
subtle engineering problems, including the pressure of
bodily fluids in others (Gerry's need to urinate in Part
Two, Hip's premature sexual desire in Part Three). Gerry,
like Lone before him, first becomes fully conscious of his
telepathic ability, then learns to direct it within another
person's mind.
The experiences of each are added to Baby's store
house of information, available to all (through Janie), but
otherwise the powers of the gestalt are mainly to be taken
on faith. In its childhood and adolescence, the gestalt
does not perform as well and as consistently as its poten
tial presumably would indicate. As children, its members
cooperate for survival, but Gerry's partial amnesia and his
later paranoia cause them to withdraw, mentally and phys
ically. An actual demonstration of their mature capabili
ties would be beyond the limits of a book whose central
concern is bringing them to maturity, not following their
superman-like exploits, alien to our experience and
sympathies, after maturity.
They are given one concrete achievement within the
book, "Earth's first anti-gravity generation" (p. 73), but
that machine is important primarily as a symbol and a
pivotal plot device. Invented near the end of Part One, it
illustrates the potential of the group, but also its idiocy
184
under Lone's direction; the purpose of the invention was to
make a farm truck maneuverable on muddy ground, as a favor
to the Prodds who no longer occupied the farm. Recurring
in Part Three, it is seen as a device Hip has sought to find
and to understand, pitting his curiosity against Gerry's
determination to obliterate all trace of the gestalt; Janie
uses a fragment of the device to reawaken Hip's curiosity,
assisting him in his recovery from the effects of Gerry's
persecution. As the only example of advanced mechanical
technology in an otherwise contemporary world, it calls
attention to itself, but not as an example of the powers of
science, rather as an example of a group mind's unlimited
possibilities.
The real technology in More than Human is parapsy-
chological, not mechanical; like all technology it offers
power and the problems of control. The fear of runaway
technology, which often gives rise in science fiction to
what Asimov calls the "Frankenstein complex," is rechan
nelled here. Within the mind, parapsychology should
logically be controllable by psychology, making the question
of controls over technology largely a matter of maturation
or character development. Each of the six major characters
is involved with this problem, four within the gestalt
(involved both as an individual and as a member of something
greater) and two outside (of whom one is closely associated
with the group, while the other is professionally distant).
185
Gerry is a variation on the stereotype of the "mad
scientist," the selfish inventor who wants only to take
personal advantage of his discovery, regardless of its
effects on others. With all the power he has available, he
has no sense of direction, no sense of responsibility except
to himself and his appetites. He seems to regard the group
more as an extension of himself than as something of which
he is only a (replaceable) part. A runaway orphan living
by stealth at the time he is taken in by Lone, he retains a
surly, vengeful attitude toward the world at all times,
fitting in well with the group's survival program of petty
thievery. For the sake of his own ego he kills Miss Kew
instead of merely deserting her when he discovers she is
smothering the group with love (the absence of which drives
them together). For sheer perversity he tortures Hip with
hypnotic commands, but he gets no enjoyment even from
sadism. Having learned he can do whatever he wants, and not
desiring anything, he withdraws self-protectively, to a kind
of mental womb position. The demonstration of Hip's exist
ence as a person, not merely as a thing to be manipulated,
draws Gerry out of himself. He discovers in himself a sense
of shame, not only because of Hip's message of ethics but
also because of Hip's demonstration of ethics, sparing
Gerry's life and offering his own. Hip's act may be
quixotic, but it is also more mature than anything Gerry has
ever done, and it works: the "mad scientist" is cured.
186
Hip, too, had to achieve that level of insight which
he transmits to Gerry, and he also started far away from it.
His childhood affluence is juxtaposed to Gerry’s poverty in
Part One, but both are seen as emotionally starved and full
of hate. As he grows, from one easy achievement to another.
Hip develops an allegiance solely to science or truth, and
places himself on the open market for others to exploit.
His abstract belief that whatever he finds to be true must
be made available to the world disregards both the potential
of any discovery for power and the tendency of the strong to
manipulate the weak. Specifically, he seeks the anti
gravity generator, then an understanding of why it has been
denied him. Tenaciously resisting Gerry's attempts to
destroy him, Hip learns self-control not through that
punishment, but through the rewards offered him by Janie,
the simple joys of living, loving, and being needed. The
son of a doctor, Hip (short for Hippocrates) Barrows heals
himself, then brings to the gestalt the sense of ethics he
has learned. Of his own free will he goes to meet Gerry and
help him, only half aware that he is thus completing both
himself and the gestalt. He recognizes that he has been
foolhardy in thinking before that he should "go headlong
into the presence of this--this monster--without his sanity,
without his memory, without arms or information" (p. 203).
But besides being whole he recognizes that he is now less
than something else, that all his adolescent wants are
187
overshadowed by something new, although he admits he doesn't
know what that something is.
Of all the major figures, Janie reaches a degree of
maturity the youngest. Apparently hard-shelled and mischie
vous when we meet her in Part One, she has already learned
in dealing with her mother that "power without control has
its demerits" (p. 32), After making friends with, then
running away with the twins, she has to "mother" them, then
to overcome Lone's suspicions of and hostility toward mere
childish minds in order to adopt him as a father. No longer
alone, she learns to control her power for mischief; in Part
Two, her telekinetic talents are said to have subdued Gerry
when he arrived at the cave, and to have convinced Miss Kew
that she must not break up the group by sending Baby to a
home for special children. Somewhat fulfilled by her
responsible role, and by the chance to express herself in
painting, she makes a faithful but not unquestioning helper
for Lone, then Gerry, not only by her ability to use force,
but also by her ability to read Baby's "semaphore system"
of communication. By Part Three, she has seen tremendous
unchecked power in Gerry and feels the need to exert some
control over it; her interest in Hip stems largely from this
need, since she feels that he may be able to introduce that
control which will integrate the gestalt. Her patience,
tenderness, and joy with Hip have a more romantic cause,
but she is hesitant to give in to it until she knows he will
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fit in, not only with her, but with the entire group.
The pivotal figure in the novel is Lone, the idiot
who emerges from his mental twilight world to become
spiritual father to a child which far surpasses its parents.
A real challenge in character-drawing, he is largely typi
fied in terms of a single human emotion, loneliness.
Loneliness drives him to seek something beyond himself and
figures predominantly in his labored thinking, even to the
extent that, when Prodd asks his name and he manages his
first word, trying to say "alone," he accepts "Lone" as an
adequate description of himself. Largely driven by
instinct, he can only communicate with telepathic babies,
until he is touched by the mind, then by the hand of Evelyn.
Trying to recapture the feeling of that contact, he accepts
the limited human contact of the Prodds, then joins with
Janie and the twins, learning along the way a bare minimum
of speech and social amenities but never really growing in
intelligence. Perfectly happy to get by, he regards the
gestalt as a remedy for his loneliness and as a means for
solving problems. Lacking judgment, he sees nothing
strange or wonderful in the gestalt's ability to create an
anti-gravity generator to improve the performance of a farm
truck, as a thank-you gift for the Prodd's care of him,
after the Prodds are no longer around to notice. "We can
do practically anything," says Janie, interpreting for Baby,
"but we most likely won't. He says we're a thing, all
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right, but the thing is an idiot" (p. 73). Only with the
death of Lone (the father) and the emergence of Gerry (the
son) can the gestalt grow in Part Two, and even then not
until Gerry overcomes certain memories of Lone. The shadow
of Lone is also present in Part Three, directly, as the
gestalt re-establishes at a higher level the equilibrium it
had with Lone and missed with Gerry.
Outside the gestalt, but closely associated with it,
is Miss Kew (Alicia), who is defined largely by her rela
tionships with others. A forbidding sister to Evelyn, she
has developed a taste for her father's whip, with which he
would "purge" them of behavior which seemed to him at all
sexually motivated. "Cured" by a psychiatrist, she is still
beset with memories of her "demon" father, against which she
perhaps overreacts, periodically dancing nude in the fields
to fulfill Evelyn's dying request that she "take a bath in
[the sunlight]." During one of these ritual expiations,
Lone enters her life, seeking information rather than sex,
and she feels almost compelled to throw herself at him. At
her request, he reads her mind, finding a "damned mishmash
inside," which perhaps suggests the inevitable result of
life and emotions bottled up, rather than shared, in con
trast to the apparent clarity and health of Evelyn in her
innocence, and Janie, later, in her emotional security made
possible by the gestalt. Within the mess two demands stand
out: to know who or what Lone is, and to lose (at age
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thirty-three) her virginity. Made a woman at last, she is
hardly freed from her prejudices, sexual or otherwise, but
she is thus able to take on the role of foster mother to
the children. In this role, she shows real love and
motherly care in conflict at times with a set of rigid
social conventions (a shield against her father’s rules),
and ironically, it is her better qualities, overwhelming
the gestalt, which result in her death.
Completely outside the group is the psychiatrist,
Stern, who functions to some extent as a "control" figure
by contrast to the other characters, by virtue of his
maturity, individual humanity, professional distance, and
scientific status. He is by no means representative of the
physical scientist, who deals ideally with quantitative
measurements, isolated phenomena, and detached observation.
Since his province is the mind, Stern must take the subjec
tive seriously but not gullibly, and if he is to help his
patients adjust, he must keep them in touch with the outside
world. Not just a disinterested engineer of the psyche, who
knows which emotional buttons to push, he becomes involved
and even afraid. Once he realizes that Gerry's "fantasies”
are real (after Gerry demonstrates his mind-reading
ability), he realizes, as Gerry does not, that Gerry is
incomplete and alone, covering over feelings of guilt with
hostility and amorality, and therefore extremely dangerous.
Although he is presumably meant to be a mature
191
human being, an example in homo sapiens of the ideal of
completeness desired by homo gestalt, Stern is extremely
limited by his role as a technical device of the author's.
His existence is circumscribed by his office and by a single
afternoon (quite a display of instant analysis); his role is
defined by its success in illustrating and getting beyond
Gerry's mental blocks so that Gerry's story can be told.
Even Stern's completeness is in a sense created by Gerry,
who identifies him with Lone, transferring to Stern his love
for his foster father, and however complete Stern may be as
a human being, he is no match for Gerry's incomplete,
immature gestalt.
A striving for maturity, for experience, for under
standing is central to the development of all the major
characters, except for Stern, and in each case it is related
to a central event in the person's life. Lone's contact
with Evelyn awakens his consciousness and he strives to
complete himself with the cooperation of others. Alicia
becomes a woman when Lone takes her virginity, thus enabling
her to mother his children, who come to her after his death.
Janie and Hip find themselves in each other, making it
possible for the gestalt to awaken to sexual love. Gerry
and Hip first seek subsidiary goals--for Gerry, the reason
for his killing Miss Kew, for Hip, the reason for certain
puzzling phenomena--but they finally force each other into
maturity.
192
Sharing, in each case, is the necessary act which
overcomes initial hostility and makes possible the tolerance
required for cooperation and understanding. Lone and Evelyn
share a pure love which ends both her innocence and his
idiocy. Lone tries to share something with the Prodds, the
farmer couple who take him in after his fight with Evelyn's
father (Lone was physically, Kew mentally ravaged). Mrs.
Prodd's pregnancy drives him away, but he returns and finds
Baby, who seems as much his brother as their child. Janie
and the twins share fun, then running away, then fear with
no one to take care of them. Lone shares food with the
girls, the group shares food with Gerry, and Janie shares
food with Hip, along with love and care. Hip shares thought
with Gerry, a sense of shame, a sense of ethics. The whole
group at times shares a greater consciousness, a "bleshing"
which begins under Lone, is almost extinguished by Miss Kew,
then torn apart by Gerry, only to be restored by Hip and
expanded to include the society of homo gestalt.
At each stage, hostility of some kind must be over
come. Kew is hostile to Lone as a man, threatening his
daughter's perversely preserved innocence. After his expe
rience with Evelyn, Lone is hostile to children, whom he has
at last outgrown, and this dislike extends at first to Janie
and the twins. Janie and the twins go through a period of
hostility to each other before they run away, and Janie
opposes the additions to the group both of Baby (whom she
193
accuses Lone of kidnaping) and of Gerry (whose behavior is
rather obnoxious). Gerry's hostility to the whole world is
overcome in part when he comes to see the group as an exten
sion of himself, but it is adequately dealt with only when
he comes to feel shame for what he has done to Hip (and
other normal humans represented by Hip).
Where this hostility is not overcome, where assimi
lation does not take place, the result can be dangerous,
even fatal. One-sided mind-sharing (by Gerry and Lone) and
one-sided or unconsummated love (Alicia and Evelyn Kew,
respectively) do not amount to assimilation. Stern's memory
is tampered with, Hip is nearly driven insane, the Kew
sisters die, after contact with the gestalt. Passive
acceptance is also one-sided; in order for Hip to become a
member of the gestalt, he must learn what he has to offer
it, then actively share it with them, practically forcing
tolerance from Gerry. Of all the members of the gestalt,
Hip must overcome the most resistance, as the group after
years of adolescence faces a new stage of maturity; accept
ing him means admitting incompleteness, recognizing sexual
love, and assimilating an outsider without psi powers.
For Gerry, confronting Hip is a reminder of his own
humanity. Treated as an object when he was a child, Gerry
has come to show the same lack of regard for others, for
human beings who are in terms of power as inferior to the
gestalt as children are to adults. In Hip, he sees that he
194
and the gestalt must seem a kind of monster when looked at
from outside, with the eyes of someone who does not share
the power and the psychological security of the gestalt.
Assimilating Hip's message of ethical responsibility, Gerry
comes to realize that some learning can only come from
personal experience, not from reading others' minds and
writings. And recognizing the humanity he can and does
share with Hip and with others, Gerry finally achieves the
respect and tolerance for others necessary for his own
maturity (or sanity). At the same time, the gestalt, by
admitting Hip as its "conscience," becomes complete and can
thus be welcomed, albeit as a child again, to the world-wide
community of homo gestalt.
Viewed figuratively, this concluding union with homo
gestalt can be seen as a metaphor, representing an integra
tion of personality, and an achievement of community, at
least equal to the utopian ideals of the psychiatrist and
the social reformer. The talented individual, or the indi
vidual who feels himself marked in some way, may well find
himself alone, and a kind of monster, even if he has not
been maltreated in his childhood. Until he grows to learn
love, and matures enough to learn enough respect for others,
to whom personal love does not extend, he cannot become a
fully functioning part of the community. Without the
community, however imperfect it may be, he cannot know how
he appears to others, and cannot complete himself. He must
195
become socialized, and fully human, if he aspires to be
more than human.
In the fictional world of More than Human, love
becomes syzygy, symbiosis, or "bleshing," the community is
first the family (the gestalt) and then the race (homo
gestalt), and the special talent becomes e.s.p. or psi
powers in general, such as folklore suggests that man has
always wanted, in order to make his social adjustment easier
or even unnecessary. This externalization of the psycholog
ical is not uncommon in science fiction, and its fictional
reality may disguise even a personal level of meaning. The
talented individual could be interpreted as the writer
himself, who turns his fantasies into stories, entertain
ments , and artworks, who has the equivalent of psi powers
in his ability to manipulate and understand his characters,
and who must learn to respect the tastes, backgrounds, and
prejudices of his audience, as well as the powers and limits
of literary technique, in order to share his writing, and
himself, with a community of readers. I do not mean to
suggest that this novel must be read as a personal allegory,
but Sturgeon is unusual among science fiction writers in his
personal involvement with his stories, and he has given
similar treatment elsewhere to the concepts of need, belong
ing, and love, and even the idea of a "maturity" which is
never complete (since full maturity is over-ripeness or
196
32
readiness for death).
However we may view More than Human as a psycholog
ical novel, a novel of character, or a Bildungsroman, the
book remains primarily a science fiction novel. Interpreted
literally, didactically, or personally, it can be seen to
involve technology (as a means to attaining a sense of
community) and its prediction and control (as matters of
maturity and understanding). The general movement of the
narrative is outward, toward larger and more inclusive defi
nitions of community, toward external manifestations of sub
jective desires, toward conscious and relatively superficial
explorations of internal psychological states. Although
there is no emphasis on the widening vistas of time (the
future) or space (beyond the Earth), discovery of something
new, something as yet unknown but not unknowable, creates an
expanded and expanding perspective, consistent with more
conventional methods of extrapolation. The psi phenomena
are not just allegorical counters, whatever they may be
taken to mean on various planes of interpretation; they are
not just story-tellers' fantasies or daydreams of the dis
advantaged. E.s.p. is treated rather as an objective real
ity within the fictional world of the novel, as a technique
which can be developed and perfected by the right people
with the right attitude, even as a means for the salvation
32
Seekers (above, note 2), p. 243.
197
of the world and the advancement of the human race. The
concreteness and importance of the concept are, in fact, so
emphasized that they make individual human beings and prob
lems pale somewhat by comparison.
That Sturgeon should be able to keep this external
reality of action and situation alive and in the foreground,
and at the same time involve the reader in personal human
problems, is one indication that a considerable amount of
craftsmanship is involved in the construction and writing
of More than Human. Although the book functions as a
science fiction exercise, it goes beyond that; although it
communicates on the surface, and even with some of the tools
of pulp fiction, it also suggests multiple levels and mean
ings. Indeed, an examination of the technical virtuosity
displayed in the book might make it seem that the action and
the philosophical-psychological content had been chosen as
pretexts for the purpose of challenging the author's versa
tility with literary form, style, and technique.
Calling attention to himself and to his writing in
a manner unusual for a pulp writer, Sturgeon is always up
to something new, surprising the reader with startling sense
impressions, fresh turns of phrase and figures of speech,
unexpected psychological insights and shocks of recognition,
numerous twists in plot and variations of established
conventions of literature in general and science fiction in
particular. He dwells on nothing long enough to give us
198
more than a vivid, fleeting impression, be it of an event,
a character, a manifestation of psi phenomena, a setting,
an image, or a symbolic identification. Everything is
vividly sketched on the surface, but also points beyond
itself, suggesting more, as ripples in water spread outward
from a disturbance toward the boundaries of the water's
container. This suggestiveness allows for a rapid juxtapo
sition of ideas, events, and episodes, which makes the novel
appear extremely fast-paced and filled with action when in
fact very little of a dramatic nature ever happens, and the
movement is largely of abstract concepts, sensuous images,
and especially language. Every element of language, of
style, and of literary form is fair game for manipulation,
for repetition with variation, for parallel and antithesis.
The general effect approaches that of a large bright canvas,
filled with somewhat abstracted and vaguely symbolic
figures, each caught straining to continue its movement
toward another figure, as in a never-to-be-completed pattern
of dance.
Even the conclusion, with its crescendoing recapitu
lation of themes and suggestion of a resolution, is only a
coming together of partners about to separate again into
another dance-figure; the long-awaited maturity turns out to
be another beginning, and the book ends on a diminuendo:
"And humbly, he joined their company" (p. 233). Beginning
with short bursts of telepathic dialogue, and an evocation
199
of the presence of music, the conclusion utilizes short and
long sentences, italics, parenthesis, and ellipsis marks,
paragraphs of description and paragraphs of explanation, to
create an effect of complexity and immense potential, with
a surface clarity which is childishly simple.
His technique is illustrated in one paragraph of
the conclusion, sandwiched between description and explana
tion, which in turn lie between snatches of telepathic
conversation. Gerry (representing his group) has just
become aware of the community of homo gestalt welcoming him,
and now "meets" telepathically several "beings" who have
supposedly engineered certain human cultural developments:
"Here was one who had whistled a phrase to Papa Haydn, and
here was one who had introduced William Morris to the
Rossettis. Almost as if it were his own memory, Gerry saw
Fermi being shown the streak of fission on a sensitive
plate, a child Landowska listening to a harpsichord, a
drowsy Ford with his mind suddenly lit by the picture of
men facing a line of machines" (p. 232). Quickly there
after , the reader discovers that homo gestalt is not above,
but rather a part of humanity, which explains that the
gestalt actors are not to be regarded as gods handing down
the above series of discoveries, even though Gerry, and
Sturgeon's prose, both turn worshipful. In the background
is the idea that homo gestalt has been with us a long time,
seeing that things are no worse than they are, staying out
200
of our awareness deliberately, but there is also the sugges
tion that gestalts do not arise frequently ("There hasn’t
been a new one for so long . . . [sic]”) for some unknown
(sinister?) reason. All this, and more, physical and mental
sense impressions, suggestions of religious and philosoph
ical thinking, is compressed into a little more than seven
hundred words.
That single paragraph, almost lost in the whole of
the conclusion, illustrates Sturgeon's technique in both
form and content. It offers five events of discovery or
revelation, two from music (one of composition, one of
performance), two from science and technology (one of more
or less basic research, which resulted eventually in the
unleashing of atomic energy, the destructiveness of which
generally outweighs its constructive potential in the public
mind, the other of industrial technology, whose economic
constructiveness is more visible than its contribution to
worker fatigue and air pollution), and one from literature
and the pictorial arts (and more, since Morris was a utopian
planner and something of a "Renaissance man" and the Pre-
Raphaelite Brotherhood suggests community, mysticism, and
decadence, among other things). The paragraph offers these
events as a discovery to Gerry of what it is he is a part
of (symbolically, humanity, and human culture, artistic and
scientific, as well as homo gestalt in the fictional sense,
which is actually more figurative, while humanity is the
201
more literal meaning). The syntax is varied to impress on
us the differences within the similarity: "here was one"
introduces the first two slightly passively, but each is
shown acting ("whistled," "introduced"); Gerry is the actor
in the other three cases, since he "saw" them, almost as
part of his own remembrances, and each of the figures he
sees is shown in a relatively passive reaction ("being
shown," "his mind suddenly lit," "listening"). At the same
time, the language is extremely simple and clearly rhythmic,
and sends the reader’s eyes and mind flying along several
different images, of varying sensory impressions, which
combine with the complex suggestiveness of the allusions,
so that each sentence, almost each phrase, is a minor
discovery in itself, yet they all coalesce into one general
impression, of revelation in history, which itself is only
a small part of the whole effect of the conclusion.
The concept of discovery is the key to Sturgeon’s
technique, in this book at least (his style varies with his
33
subject matter and purpose, in other works). Varying his
tone to some extent with character and situation, Sturgeon
consistently produces an air of wonder, as if he has just
discovered that words can rhyme or alliterate, that images
33
"Sturgeon was a literary phenomenon. In every one
of his stories he strove not only for originality of idea or
approach, but for a style to fit the story line as well. No
two stories were even remotely alike. He was forever
experimenting." Sam Moskowitz, Explorers of the Infinite:
Shapers of Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1963),
p. 541.
202
can shift and even pun, surrealistically, as in Gerry's free
association in Part Two:
Eight. Eight, plate, state, hate. I ate from the
plate of the state and I hate. . . . Eight, Eight
years old. Eight, hate. Years, fears. Old, cold.
Damn it! I twisted and twitched on the couch,
trying to find a way to keep the cold out. I ate
from the plate of the--
I grunted and with my mind I took all the eights
and all the rhymes and everything they stood for,
and made it all black. But it wouldn't stay black.
I had to put something there, so I made a great big
luminous figure eight and just let it hang there.
But it turned on its side and inside the loops it
began to shimmer. It was like one of those movie
shots through binoculars. I was going to have to
look through whether I liked it or not. (p. 84)
The narrator seems to have just happened upon unusual simi
larities, as in the last sentence of the following descrip
tion of breakfast prepared by Janie for Hip, after she gets
him out of jail, and as she begins to try to bring him back
to sanity:
The girl was spooning fragrant bacon grease over and
over three perfect eggs in a pan. When he sat down
on the edge of the bed she slid the eggs deftly onto
a plate, leaving all the grease behind in the pan.
They were perfect, the whites completely firm, the
yolks unbroken, liquid, faintly filmed over. There
was bacon, four brief seconds less than crisp, paper
dried and aromatic. There was toast, golden outside,
soft and white inside, with butter melting quickly,
running to find and fill the welcoming caves and
crevices; two slices with butter, one with marmalade.
And these lay in some sunlight, giving off a color
possible only to marmalade and to stained glass.
(p. 156)
Even where he is clearly striving for the striking effect,
it seems to take the form of a revelation, as in the novel's
opening paragraph:
203
THE idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctu
ated by the white lightning of hunger and the
flickering of fear. His clothes were old and many-
windowed. Here peeped a shinbone, sharp as a cold
chisel, and there in the torn coat were ribs like
the fingers of a fist. He was tall and flat. His
eyes were calm and his face was dead. (p. 3)
This air of discovery is shared by the characters
themselves, not merely in terms of events and other charac
ters, but in relation to themselves, their powers and
potentialities, and their sharply aware sense impressions
of the wonders of everyday life and nature. Fifteen and
innocent, not knowing she wants an end of innocence, Evelyn
sits outdoors and observes:
It was spring, the part of spring where the bursting
is done, the held-in pressures of desiccated sap-
veins and gum-sealed buds are gone, and all the
world's in a rush to be beautiful. The air was
heavy and sweet; it lay upon lips until they parted,
pressed them until they smiled, entered boldly to
beat in the throat like a second heart. It was air
with a puzzle in it, for it was still and full of
the colors of dreams, all motionless; yet it had a
hurry to it. The stillness and the hurry were
alive and laced together, and how could that be?
That was the puzzle. (pp. 8-9)
Two days later, she is shown looking, again, this time from
behind a window:
It rained for a day and a night and for half the
next day, and when the sun came out it rained again,
upward; it rained light from the heavy jewels which
lay on the rich new green. Some jewels shrank and
some fell and then the earth in a voice of softness,
and leaves in a voice of texture, and flowers speak
ing in color, were grateful. (pp. 10-11)
When the starving Gerry enters Lone's cave he notes that
"the air had a haze of smoke and such a wonderful, heart
breaking, candy-and-crackling smell of food that a little
204
hose squirted inside my mouth" (p. 88). And a little later
Gerry reflects on the pleasantness of living with Miss Kew:
And the morning goes by like that, school with a
recess, there in the big long living room. The
twins with the ends of their tongues stuck out,
drawing the alphabet instead of writing it, and
then Janie, when it's time, painting a picture, a
real picture of a cow with trees and a yellow
fence that goes off into the distance. Here I am
lost between the two parts of a quadratic equation,
and Miss Kew bending close to help me, and I smell
the sachet she has on her clothes. I hold up my
head to smell it better, and far away I hear the
shuffle and klunk of filled pots going on the stove
back in the kitchen. (p. 122)
In passages like these, where nothing dramatic or
melodramatic "happens," the language is alive, and a great
deal happens in terms of poetry. In the last quotation,
for instance, the senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch
are all evoked, the latter via physical gestures or move
ments . The spatial relationship of kitchen and living room
is established, and complemented by the expansion of the
scene which the painting introduces, comparing the outdoors
(fenced) with the confinement of school in a "big long"
room. Parallels are developed between the drawing of
pictures and the drawing of words, and between the language
of words and the language of mathematics. The naivete and
earnestness of childhood envelops the other children and
also Gerry, describing them, and getting lost in the mental
haze Miss Kew's sachet recalls to him. The habitual
passage of mornings invoked at the beginning is reinforced
by the sense of class periods suggested by "recess," a
205
special time for painting, and the approach of lunch time.
The pace is continually rapid, but varied by alliteration,
punctuation, and the use of small words and what in verse
we call spondees. And the extremely limited vocabulary
conveys a sense of artless simplicity with its predominance
of everyday, one-syllable words, in which the technicality
of "quadratic equation," the formality of "sachet," the
onomatoepoeia of "shuffle and klunk," and the subdued
cleverness of such conceits as "drawing the alphabet" and
being "lost between the two parts of a quadratic equation"
create an unobtrusive charm.
The paragraph is also full of cliches, the "real
picture," the helpful, loving schoolteacher, the incompetent
Negro children, the sentimentality of childhood remembrance
all being extremely overworked in popular fiction, yet
Sturgeon manages to reinvigorate them by the lightness of
his style, the barest suggestion of description, and the
rapidity of juxtaposition. Throughout the book, his reli
ance on pulp stereotypes of character, situation, emotion,
and description is not always as successfully disguised as
it is here; yet the pace and the psychological and parapsy-
chological foreground generally keep it under control.
That the use of such "subliterary" tools is deliberate is,
I think, clear from the contrast in style between passages
in which they are more and less overt; Miss Kew's memories
inside Gerry's head are related in a pastiche of "true
206
romances" style, which clearly separates it from the two
styles of Gerry, dealing with his dreamy remembrances and
his belligerent present; Mr. Kew is even more of a carica
ture, and cleverly mocked by the passage where, after his
death,the young Janie considers the books available, in what
we know to be his library, for reading aloud to the twins.
In each of the passages quoted, we can also see the
way in which motifs recur or are set up for later recur
rence. Other worlds, both inside and outside the book, are
symbolized and alluded to, even as the worlds themselves
beautifully evoke the experience or sensation. The light
ning and flickering of the opening suggests Lone's hypnotic
talent, the cold chisel of his shinbone is echoed in the
coldness of Gerry's introduction to us and his capitulation
to Hip, the fingers of a fist suggest the gestalt and anger,
and the bleakness and angularity of the whole passage
conjure up the aloneness, ineptness, and desolation which
is the alternate fate, not only of Lone, but also of most
of the book's characters. The sense of tension and pressure
in nature describes Evelyn's internal revolt against her
father's restrictions; the synesthesia which follows pre
pares us for her telepathic contact with Lone. The perfect
ness of breakfast, and the symbol of potentiality in eggs,
foreshadows Hip's recovery, his making himself and the
gestalt whole. And the final passage quoted, with its
fence, and the slightest suggestion of smothering and
207
intoxication evoked by Miss Kew's sachet, symbolizes the
gestalt's captivity within her home, even as it emphasizes
the sweetness of that captivity.
Frequently striking in themselves, and aptly expres
sive of a particular emotion or situation, images in
Sturgeon's work also contribute to a strongly sensuous
impression, even as they work in fairly intellectual
patterns. Their concreteness, color, and appeal to several
senses in succession give the narrative an almost physical
presence, and make it seem extraordinarily full and vivid,
even though its many actions are mainly small and of an
ordinary, everyday variety. In addition to functioning as
leitmotifs, as shown above, they produce a background of
contrasts--hot and cold, dark and light, indoors and out
doors, etc.--and contribute to underlying patterns, such as
the pattern of sexual symbolism which supports the basic
movement of the book (toward enlightenment, understanding,
maturity). The entire novel is an extended metaphor of
birth, which the myriad individual discoveries (intellectual
and emotional "births") recapitulate in miniature. And a
good deal of the imagery suggests penetration, gestation,
and a bursting out of confinement to achieve something new.
Telepathic penetration seems to involve the eyes
(sight connoting understanding) and the incipient realiza
tion of potential (Lone's and Gerry's irises seem about to
spin just before penetration), but its sexual connections
208
are also made clear. Gerry describes Stern's violated mind
as a "tunnel," Lone and Evelyn "awaken" each other through
telepathic love, and Lone discovers in Alicia's mind her
desire that he end her virginity. In a bravura exhibition
of technique, Sturgeon shows us Gerry breaking through his
mental block in Part Two, and releasing a flood of Alicia's
memories with which he had been inundated when he first
spoke to her. The transition into her remembrances is
identical with her closing memory, of sex with Lone: "There
was a pressure, a stretching apart, and a . . . [sic] a
breakage. And with a tearing agony and a burst of triumph
that drowned the pain, it was done" (pp. 129, 139). Since
Lone and Alicia are the gestalt's parents (symbolically, at
least), the memory of their love-making would probably have
to be suppressed by their twelve-year-old son, especially
since it was obtained by a virtual fulfillment of the
oedipal desire, and Gerry has even gone so far as to sup
press any knowledge of his own talent which enabled him to
possess his mother and her memories.
The recurrent images of confinement and escape seem
clearly allied to the concepts of pregnancy and childbirth.
Images of bursting are not uncommon (as in Evelyn's intoxi
cation with spring, quoted above), the unusual phrase
"encysted need" occurs three times, and there is a general
sense of things (people) trying to come to fruition.
Evelyn, Alicia, Janie, and the twins all manage somehow to
209
burst out of confinement, and the gestalt manages three
times to escape limiting physical and emotional environ
ments: Lone's cave and idiocy, Miss Kew's home and
emotional asphyxiation, and (presumably, since the book ends
on a hopeful note) Kew's mansion and withdrawal. Outdoor
imagery contrasts favorably with the indoors; trees and
grass, sun and sky are associated with openness, freedom,
and light, whereas the cave, the Kew estate, Hip's jail cell
and his apartment (and cells and wards in his memory) are
dark, close, even too warm and moist (like a womb), and must
be escaped. Toward the end, as Hip approaches his confron
tation with Gerry, he observes the labyrinthine paths and
corridors of the Kew house, and its "mossy" wall which has
one gate, he experiences a feeling that he is "walking . . .
in a great sick mouth" (p. 218), and he notes that his
apparently final destination is an inner room with a door
that fits perfectly flush, the door through which Gerry
(and the others) will enter. In this context, Hip
(Hippocrates) seems to have the role of the doctor presiding
over a difficult delivery, but a successful one,since the
gestalt is_ welcomed into the world of homo gestalt, as a
child.
The figure of the gestalt is central to the complex
pattern of relationships between the characters. Among the
many explicit similes, mechanical, biological, and social,
that Sturgeon employs to describe it, the most picturesque
210
are those comparing it to the fingers of a hand, or the
organs of a person, but those comparing it to a gang of
workmen or a marching band may be more accurate. Implic
itly, it is presented to us as a family, whose members are
distinct, interacting, and somewhat interchangeable. It
has a spiritual father in Lone, a foster-mother in Alicia,
a capable older sister in Janie, a sullen adolescent son in
Gerry, and three younger children, one a perpetual baby.
The relationships are complicated by Gerry's telepathic
knowledge of his "mother," through which he has sexual
knowledge of his "father," and by Lone's and Janie's outside
contacts. Lone's first love was of Evelyn, which makes his
possession of Alicia symbolically incestuous. Lone was
"raised" by the Prodds as an adopted son, and then adopted
as his "child" the baby whose coming demanded that he and
the Prodds part. The last addition, Hip, who "marries in"
to the family, has to overcome Gerry's hostility toward a
love of his "sister" (or "mother," since Janie also per
formed that role for the group, and we know Gerry has
oedipal conflicts). Within this extended family, additional
parallels and antitheses can be seen: wealthy Hip and
destitute Gerry feel unwanted in childhood, and pass through
stages of delayed adolescence, in which they are emotional
"monsters"; Lone and Baby are rather different varieties of
idiots; Janie's fire and flexibility contrast both with the
softness and innocence of Evelyn and with the prudishness
211
and masochism of Alicia; Gerry, brilliant and hostile, has
little in common with the feeble-minded, passive Lone,
except that each is a capable telepath and an inept head for
the gestalt.
Patterns of imagery, individuated and external,
provide a large amount of Sturgeon's characterization,
especially of the minor characters. Least effective of all
are the Negroes, for whom stereotyped blackness seems to be
their single character trait; Miss Kew's maid, Miriam, and
the janitor who is ostensibly the twins' father, are indis
tinct and scarcely distinguishable, while Bonnie and Beanie,
themselves, identical in appearance and practically unable
to speak, appear to exist merely to indicate that gestalt
membership is not restricted by race. Also close to nonen
tities are the male friends of Janie's mother, the sheriff
from whom Janie obtains Hip's release, and the Army psychia
trist who "treated" Hip for his idee fixe (the anti-gravity
generator) each of whom is simply defined by his occupation.
Others are slightly advanced beyond them: Kew, character
ized by his whip, his library, and his obsession of repres
sing sexuality in his daughters; Evelyn, who finds nature so
full to bursting and insists on exposing herself to it,
physically; the Prodds, who struggle vainly with their farm
and its machinery, and not so vainly with Lone, whom they
nurse to health and manage to educate, but who abandon Baby,
their hope for the future, Mrs. Prodd by dying, Prodd by
212
deserting; and Wima, the lonely tramp who is Janie's mother,
for whom life is nothing more than a mindless search for
fun. Not always avoiding cliche and perhaps not trying to,
Sturgeon does not belabor the stereotype, but sketches the
character in terms of a few marked impressions, suggesting
hidden aspects that might round the character off if we only
knew more about them: Prodd's delusion that his dead wife
will return, Wima's conviction that her missing soldier
husband could have handled the unruly Janie.
There is no apparent pattern involved in the naming
of characters, although considerable local symbolism is
apparent. The Prodds are blunt farmers, laboring people who
don't talk too much, and who "prod" Lone into working for a
living and learning to speak. Lone is lonesome and alone,
and Hip Barrows is aware ("hip"), a doctor's son who is
himself a healer (Hippocrates), and a man returned almost
from the dead ("barrows"). Kew may be a question mark
("Q.") or a source ("Quelle"), and his older daughter, in
her stepmother role, is perhaps a mistake for the gestalt
("miscue"). Stern, not sternly characterized, could be a
punning abbreviation of Sturgeon, thus a stand-in for the
author, amazed and overcome by the creations of his imagina
tion. As the first woman (for Lone), Evelyn might be an
allegorical Eve, while her sister's name may allude to
Lewis Carroll's Alice, although Alicia refuses to accept
the evidence of her senses, that her house is a wonderland
213
of psi phenomena. As they stand, the names Evelyn and
Alicia carry a connotation of gentility, and emotional
connotations carry the only significance I can see in Gerard
(a bit snotty) or Janie (a bit cuter and more little-girlish
than Jane). Least ambiguous of all is the name Baby, and
the names of Bonnie and Beanie signify little except that
they are twins.
Names, like external imagery, are useful, even
necessary devices for suggesting certain qualities of a
character without subjecting him to a detailed analysis,
and for connecting him with events, issues, and other
characters. But more information, particularly of a more
subjective nature, is needed for a major character,
especially since subjective states are so important to the
novel's theme and development. The subjective aspects of
Sturgeon's characters, examined only to a limited extent,
are introduced in several ways. Least directly, there are
the external images already mentioned, including names and
their allusions or connotations, and there are the charac
ter's functions, both overt and symbolic, in the plot and
in various patterns. More obviously, there is the assump
tion of a specific character's point-of-view, from which to
present his actions, speeches, and even thoughts, the last
of which are given to us at times by third-person narration,
at times by internal monologue, fitted, as is the novel's
dialogue, to the specific character.
214
Point-of-view is handled in a different way in each
of the three parts of More than Human. The narrator of
Part One is presumably omniscient, but he chooses to alter
nate glimpses inside and outside various characters. In
the first fourteen segments separated by spacing, Lone,
Evelyn, Alicia, Kew, Prodd, Mrs. Prodd, Gerry, and Hip are
each given some subjective treatment in this manner. The
same viewpoint is used for two consecutive segments only
once, and single viewpoints are varied with multiple or
alternating viewpoints and an objective viewpoint outside
all the characters. Janie dominates the next ten segments,
although three are given over to Lone, and the last eight,
although they involve Janie, Baby, and the twins, are
dominated by Lone. The minds most effectively entered are
Lone's and Evelyn's, both of which are fairly simple, and
can be sketched in rather broad strokes, but Janie, Gerry,
Hip, and Alicia are also internalized with some success.
Parts Two and Three are alike in their almost total
restriction to a single consciousness, but there are signif
icant differences between the two handlings of point-of-
view, differences which are not limited to the nature of the
character whose consciousness is penetrated. Gerry is the
first-person narrator of Part Two, the frame of which takes
place in Stern's office, but the action of which takes place
mainly in Gerry's memory, including the ten-page excerpt,
in her own thoughts, of Miss Kew's remembrance of Lone.
215
Hip is the separate character to whom the third-person
narrator of Part Three mainly limits himself, although he
also describes things about Hip and actions in his presence
which Hip does not observe, and the conclusion reverts to
Gerry, as head and representative of the completed gestalt.
This manipulation and variation of the point-of-
view accomplishes several things. It takes us inside the
characters to some extent, yet it prevents us from being
dominated by the thinking of any single character. A some
what internalized treatment complements the psi motifs, and
lets us see the longings within the characters which will
draw them together. The diffuseness and rapid alternation
of viewpoint in Part One ties together these longings, but
it also contrasts the characters with each other. It sets
up a tolerance for varying attitudes, supporting the theme
of learning regard for others. Thus a sense of aesthetic
distance is established which prevents us from identifying
too strongly with the wrong-headed Gerry in Part Two, before
the corrective of Part Three can be applied.
In terms of the structure of the novel as a whole,
the rapid alternation of viewpoints in Part One establishes
the formal identity of the spaced segments as significant
narrative units. The gradual centralization of viewpoint
as the gestalt begins to take shape results in a kind of
funnel effect, whereby the restriction of viewpoint in Part
Two, if not inevitable, is certainly a natural sequel. The
216
third-person omniscient narrator of Part Three, also not an
inevitable structural feature, complements Gerry's first-
person narration of Part Two, supporting the two parts'
complementary relationships of character (Hip vs. Gerry),
plot (both centering on a search for lost memories), and
theme (power vs. mercy, difference vs. likeness, two kinds
of accomplishment and completion).
If there is a problem of unity in the book, it is
largely due to its genesis as a novelette. A masterful
display of control of form and technique, "Baby is Three"
ended on a sentimental note, as Gerry, having discovered he
only imagined killing Miss Kew, decides to buy her flowers.
In the revised form, with Miss Kew actually dead, Gerry's
erasure of Stern's mind and Bonnie's erasure of the tape
recorder seem more sinister, demanding correction or retri
bution, but Part Two is still complete in itself. Because
it is so self-contained, the parts surrounding it could not
be done in the same form or style, but must fit together
more like movements in music. Part One is quite successful
on its own terms, full of color, action, and confusing
variety, and it establishes the themes for its successors,
even introducing Gerry and Hip at an early stage to complete
the cast of major characters (except for Stern). Part Three
is more conventional and pale alongside its predecessors :
the development of love between Janie and Hip is handled
with charm as well as sentiment, but it lacks the shock of
217
Lone's contact with Evelyn, or Gerry's mental penetration of
Alicia; Hip's and Janie's retelling of his past is not
nearly as vivid as Gerry's re-living of his; the melodra
matic scuffling among members of the gestalt is no match for
the venomous violence Kew wreaks on Lone; and the explana
tion of the book's "moral" is a bit too pat, somewhat too
overtly speech-making.
Even the conventionality and relative obviousness of
Part Three, although they may be failures in execution, may
also be understandable, in terms of the demands of the
science fiction audience, the analogy of musical form, and
the role of surprise and discovery in More than Human. The
reader's demand that major points be clearly communicated
and explained was stronger in 1953 than it is today, now
that literary indirection has penetrated science fiction
somewhat more. In the third and last movement of a musical
composition, it might not be wholly out of place to repeat
themes or motifs in a minor key. And such a recapitulation
might be intended, not only to allow further development
and completion of the book's major ideas, but also to con
trast, by its subdued quality, with the attempt at tran
scendence and grandeur which marks the conclusion.
Surprises are hardly out of place in More than
Human. Although Sturgeon has accounted to some extent for
scientific disbelief, he has also constructed his book so as
to make questions of logic and scientific probability
218
inapplicable. Days and years passing are very much and
quite specifically a part of the story, yet the only refer
ence point in the historically real world is the fact that,
in Janie's childhood, her father was involved in World War
II. Even the approximate city or state is impossible to
discern from the descriptive data given, yet the settings
are given in some visual detail, and are geographically
located close together, in a narrowly circumscribed area at
the center of which lies the ominous Kew estate. The
recurrence of this "home," the allusions to the characters'
"family" relationship, and the importance given to subjec
tive longings as early as Part One, all combine to make the
gestalt's success seem almost inevitable. Within the scope
of this poetic, rather than scientific logic, minor plot
surprises, "discoveries" by the narrator and his characters,
and literary "experiments" by the author are part of the
"expected" pattern.
Thus we may understand the logic behind some of the
author's choices in Part Three, even though we do not fully
appreciate the result. Lone's shocks of love and violence
can hardly be repeated, or even matched, using normal
characters. Hip's past is related, rather than shown, in
the middle of Part Three for reasons of balance. Compli
cated though it is, Hip's past is not as important to the
total gestalt as is Gerry's past, involving the others, in
Part Two, or Hip's present with Janie, both of which are
219
shown directly. The length of time it takes Hip, a normal
human being, to recover, must be contrasted with the single
afternoon of Gerry's (incomplete) self-examination, but
dramatizing what is in Hip's memory would make that section
too long. The scuffle with Gerry at the end is needed, too,
to illustrate Hip's selflessness, Gerry's resistance, and
the dissension within the gestalt which has turned everyone
against Gerry. Finally, even the talkiness of Hip's
thoughts, as he prepares to give Gerry his moral lesson, has
some justification, although it might have been handled less
repetitiously: a normal human being can only communicate
with words, and Sturgeon has even managed to make words
pictorial, as he described Hip's preparation of the message
in his mind for Gerry to scan telepathically.
In a good year for science fiction novels, More than
Human perhaps came closest to being great science fiction,
or really good fiction in general. It succeeded, however,
almost by not being science fiction; Sturgeon won the Inter
national Fantasy Award for his book, not the "Hugo" for best
3 4
science fiction novel. Yet the book is built on science
fiction conventions, it does involve an exercise in
n /
The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester won the "Hugo"
for best novel of 1953. Other competitors included:
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement, The Caves of Steel by
Isaac Asimov, ChiIdhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, Bring the
Jubilee by Ward and Out of the Deeps by John Wyndham (all of
which are on the MLA list noted above, Chapter II, note 52).
220
extrapolation, and it does subject a kind of technology as
well as some scientific assumptions to examination. The
success of More than Human was also achieved almost by its
not being literature, i.e. by exploiting, not avoiding
conventions of pulp fiction. Sturgeon's fairy tale would be
insupportable in a long novel, or one with a heavy style,
full of psychologizing. Sturgeon's conception demands
characters who are to some extent grotesques, variations on
stereotypes, and in general, the variation is capably per
formed. Sturgeon's prose, too, is derived from the simplic
ity and directness of pulp style, although it has a supple
ness and suggestiveness rarely found in pulp fiction, and it
generally avoids the staleness and mawkishness frequently
found in pulp fiction. In summary, then, I would say that
Sturgeon, in handling a concept which can hardly be done
justice to outside the genre, has extended the boundaries of
the genre considerably, and has done about as well as can be
done within those boundaries.
CHAPTER VI
WALTER M. MILLER, JR.: A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ (1959)
In Science and the Shabby Curate of Poetry (New
York, 1965) , Martin Green recounts his experiences and dis
coveries as an English man of letters who subjected himself
to a year's study in "science,” objectively demonstrating to
himself the validity of C. P. Snow's diagnosis of a split
between the literary and scientific cultures. One result of
that separation, Green notes, is the popular manifestation
of science and scientific thinking in science fiction, which
he respects for what he feels it is trying to do, even
though he believes it is doomed as literature and will, at
best, be absorbed into the mainstream the way that nine
teenth century American folk humor was. In a perceptive
essay, Green writes: "The split between the cultures, the
purification [sic] of the literary mind, which has so
specialized the subject-matter of serious fiction, has
provoked a kind of rebellion, or separatist movement. . . .
Quite major themes of the imagination are developed there
in a way that the non-scientific reader recognizes as both
221
222
authentic and at the same time deeply alien to him."'*'
One of the books which Green chooses to exemplify
his thesis is A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), by Walter M.
Miller, Jr., a novel in which history and religion are given
science-fictional treatment and science fiction is given a
relatively literary voice. Contrasting Miller's novel with
Buddenbrooks and War and Peace, he points out that whereas
Mann and Tolstoi illustrate their ideas through an in-depth
treatment of character and proto-typical if not actual
event, in science fiction "the historical imagination is
encouraged to a much freer play; the writer invents a new
version of the Renaissance, re-creates with variations the
life of a medieval monastery." Although he grants that
"there are some beautiful moments in the book, some imagina
tive feats that succeed by the most conventional standards,"
Green insists that "the thing to emphasize here is the
oddity, for the literary man, and yet the authenticity, of
its treatment of a familiar theme." Reasoning from the
artistic success of this book, and of one or two others in
which church machinery, rather than church dogma, is varied
and extrapolated, Green derives a general conclusion about
religion in science fiction, a conclusion which a wider
■^Martin Green, Science and the Shabby Curate of
Poetry (New York, 1965), pp. 12-121.
2
Green, p. 124.
3
Green, p. 124.
223
examination, despite uncovering exceptions, would also bear
out: "instead of probing into rationalistic experience to
expose its limitedness, its incoherence, its inadequacy,
under strain; or introducing unnatural or supernatural
phenomena in close combination with the most ruthless natur
alism; instead of this the science-fiction writer moves
outward, constructs new religious systems, applies them to
new worlds.
Green's interest, if not his perceptivity, was
shared by many in the literary community at the time of the
book's publication. Miller's novel won high praise from
Edmund Fuller in the Chicago Sunday Tribune, Robert Phelps
in the New York Herald-Tribune Book Review, and Orville
Prescott in the San Francisco Chronicle.^ General approval
with some reservations came from Stanley J. Rowland in
Christian Century, Roy Perrott in the Manchester Guardian
Weekly, Maurice Richardson in the New Statesman, and John
£
Coleman in the Spectator. Martin Levin in the New York
^Green, p. 125.
^Review by Edmund Fuller, Chicago Sunday Tribune,
March 6, 1960, p. 1. Review by Robert Phelps, New York
Herald-Tribune Book Review, March 13, 1960, p. W. Review
by Orville Prescott, San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1960,
p. 27.
£
Review by Stanley J. Rowland, Christian Century,
May 25, 1960, pp. 640-641. Review by Roy Perrott,
Manchester Guardian Weekly, April 7, 1960, p. 13. Review
by Maurice Richardson, New Statesman, April 9, 1960, p. 533.
Review by John Coleman, Spectator, March 25, 1960, pp. 444-
445.
224
Times Book Review expressed definitely mixed feelings, as
did Edwin Kennebeck in Commonweal, and the reviewer for
Time.^ Marcus Klein in Nation treated the novel purely as
a symbol of national complacency in the face of world
conflagration, while Whitney Balliett in the New Yorker and
James Yaffe in Saturday Review saw almost nothing good in
it at all.^
The number of general periodicals which thought
A Canticle for Leibowitz worth reviewing was unusually large
for a science-fiction novel. None of them reviewed it in a
special science-fiction section and some of the reviewers
even seemed totally unaware of the science-fiction back
ground of Miller, and even of the book, whose three parts
g
had originally appeared in F&SF between 1955 and 1957.
Those who were aware of this background attempted to dismiss
it, or found fault with the book on that account. Coleman
felt there was "mercifully little 'imaginative' S F jargonry
[sic]," Rowland complained of "flaws that are apparently
^Review by Martin Levin, New York Times Book Review,
March 27, 1960, pp. 42-43. Review by Edwin Kennebeck,
Commonweal, March 4, 1960, pp. 632-634. Anonymous review,
Time, February 22, 1960, p. 110.
g
Review by Marcus Klein, Nation, November 19, 1960,
pp. 398-402. Review by Whitney Balliett, New Yorker,
April 2, 1960, p. 159. Review by James Yaffe, Saturday
Review, June 4, 1960, p. 21.
^Walter M. Miller, Jr., "A Canticle for Leibowitz,"
F&SF, April, 1955, pp. 93-111; "And the Light is Risen,"
F&SF, August, 1956, pp. 3-80; "The Last Canticle," F&SF,
February, 1957, pp. 3-50.
225
indigenous to its genre," Phelps wrote that it was not
typical of science fiction, and Perrott claimed to be
astonished that "space fiction" [sic] had produced a genuine
"novel. Miller's craftsmanship was generally applauded,
even by those who felt it was wasted, but that was a second
ary consideration or perhaps a basic qualification for
reviewing the book at all. Most of the reviewers used the
novel as a pretext for a brief article justifying religion,
faith, hope, or humanism at the expense of everyday
politics, public complacency, science, and science fiction.
Inside the science-fiction community, Miller's book
was recognized as science fiction, with a not uncommon
religious theme and framework, written by an established
science-fiction writer. Floyd C. Gale in Galaxy gave it his
highest rating and the following praise: "Practically all
SF stories dealing with religious themes have been top-
drawer, written with a careful eye toward perfection because
of their controversial nature. Miller's belongs at the very
top of the top. It has many passages of remarkable power
and deserves the widest possible audience.P. Schuyler
Miller in Analog commended the author on his characters and
the depth and handling of his theme , calling the book "an
■^Coleman, Rowland, Perrott (above, note 6); Phelps
(above, note 5).
Review by Floyd C. Gale, Galaxy, February, 1961,
p. 139.
226
12
impressive piece of writing." Having praised the novel's
parts, when they were originally published, F&SF, for whom
Damon Knight was then reviewer, merely noted the publication
13
of the whole. Knight inexplicably omitted reference to
the book in his collected reviews, and James Blish, in an
article dealing with religion in science fiction, called
14 -
Miller's book a "deservedly admirable" contribution. The
highest praise came in September, 1961, when the Nineteenth
World Science Fiction Convention, meeting in Seattle,
awarded Walter M. Miller, Jr. his second "Hugo," naming
A Canticle for Leibowitz the best science fiction novel of
I960.15
Up until then, Miller had been regarded, in Sam
Moskowitz's words, as "the perennially promising author."1^
An engineer-turned-writer, he had published some forty-odd
stories in the major science fiction magazines in the
12
Review by P. Schuyler Miller, Analog, November,
1960, pp. 165-166.
13F&SF, June, 1960, p. 87.
^William Atheling, Jr. [James Blish], The Issue at
Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction,
ed. James Blish (Chicago, 1964), p. 55. Damon Knight, In
Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction, rev.
ed. (Chicago, 1967).
15See The Hugo Winners, ed. Isaac Asimov (New York,
1962), for a listing of the award winners through the 1961
World Science Fiction Convention.
16
Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of
Modern Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966),
------------------
227
Fifties; several were chosen for anthologies, sometimes of
the best stories in the field, but many of his tales are
17
rather conventional and far from distinguished. "The
Darfsteller,1 1 a story about a human actor struggling
quixotically to compete in an age of automated stage plays,
won for him a "Hugo" in 1955 for the previous year's best
novelette, but he was not able to publish a collection of
18
stories until after the success of his novel. The first
collection, Conditionally Human (1962), combines "The
Darfsteller" with two other novelettes, demonstrates his
proficiency with fiction of medium length dealing with
serious intellectual and emotional themes, and shows a
generally prosaic and sometimes plodding style. The second
collection, The View from the Stars (1964), consisting of
nine stories from the period 1951-1954, exhibits a consider
able range of subject matter, various degrees of control
over style, and a talent for compression, and makes it clear
that the ability to construct effective scenes and dramatic
contrasts was present early in Miller's abbreviated career.
Ironically, by the time these books were published, their
■^See MIT Index and supplements (above, Chapter I,
note 35) for bibliographical data. See also W. R. Cole,
A Checklist of Science Fiction Anthologies ([New York],
1964). With reference to Miller's biography, mention of his
engineering background is made in Richardson (above, note
6), on the dust jacket of A Canticle for Leibowitz, and in
Donald R. Tuck, A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy,
rev. ed. , 2 vols” (Hobart, Tasmania, 1959) .
18
See Hugo (above, note 15).
228
author was no longer writing science fiction; aside from the
considerable revisions of earlier material embodied in his
novel, no new science fiction has appeared under his name
19
since 1957. Nevertheless the perennially promising
author" had fulfilled his promise; his last work was one of
the best novels ever to emerge from the pulp science fiction
field.
A novel of about 100,000 words, A Canticle for
Leibowitz is composed of three parts, roughly equal in
length, sharing the same basic setting in space but sepa-
20
rated in time by gaps of approximately 600 years. Each
part is a coherent novelette, an original variation on a
conventional science fiction theme, carefully plotted and
constructed for its own particular effects. Each individual
story, dealing with individuals1 personal struggles, brings
to life the issues and ideas of the whole which, because of
the interplay between the novelettes, is thus something
greater than its parts. Making good use of science
fictional conventions, methods, and philosophy, Miller has
gone beyond them to produce a dissertation on the ambiguity
of advance and the relativity of knowledge, against a
■^The only item I have been able to locate which was
published since 1960 under Miller's name is a political
article on the Kennedy-Hoffa feud: Walter M. Miller, Jr.,
"Bobby and Jimmy," Nation, April 7, 1962, pp. 300-303.
?n
Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz
(Philadelphia, 1960). All page references in text refer to
this edition.
229
background of history as an aesthetic pattern, a seamless
fabric into which individuals and institutions, actual
events and folklore are inextricably interwoven. Yet for
all the complexity, solemnity, and high seriousness that
such a description (aptly) suggests, the book is first of
all an entertainment, full of fun and occasional thrills,
presenting sympathetic characters in a narrative of curious
and interesting situations and events.
Part One, "Fiat Homo," originally published as "A
Canticle for Leibowitz," consists of eleven chapters cover
ing 109 pages. It tells the story of Brother Francis
Girard, covering twenty-two years of his life at Leibowitz
Abbey in the twenty-sixth century, in what was the South
western United States before the Atomic Deluge. Fasting in
preparation for taking his vows at age seventeen, Francis
comes upon a fallout shelter in which it appears there are
relics of the engineer who founded his monastic order to
preserve what scientific knowledge was left in the Dark Ages
of the twentieth century. Like his colleagues, Francis has
no idea of the true meaning of the relics (a grocery list, a
blueprint, some scribbled notes); unlike them, he refuses to
speculate and contribute to the folklore growing around his
discovery (including the conjecture that the old Jewish
pilgrim who directed Francis' attention to the shelter might
have been the blessed Leibowitz himself). A simple soul,
Francis is delayed seven years in professing his vows
230
because the apparent miraculousness of his discovery
threatens to discredit the claims of the order for its
founder's canonization; admitted at last, he becomes an
apprentice copyist, and spends fifteen years making an
illuminated copy of the blueprint in his spare time, while
investigators from New Rome examine and eventually accept
his findings as evidence supporting the canonization.
Entrusted to take both copies to the Pope for the canoniza
tion ceremonies, Francis is set upon by robbers, radiation-
deformed monsters, whose preference for the gilded copy
allows him to get through with the relic intact. After
seeing the shabby capital, he is killed and eaten by the
same robbers on his way home, and buried by the same old
wandering Jew who appeared at the story's beginning.
The science fictional framework set up in this
story, a framework which embraces the whole novel, should be
obvious; the problems of survival and rebuilding after a
global catastrophe have long been staples in pulp science
fiction, and warnings in science fiction of the dangers of
atomic war (including the likelihood of radiation-produced
mutations) predated the Manhattan project. Within that
framework, however, Miller has also made use of other
conventions frequently seen in science fiction.
The science-fictionist's concern with social
mechanics frequently demands that he briefly characterize
the government operating within his tale; not infrequently,
231
that government is a theocracy, empty of belief, employing
ritual and dogma for purely political purposes. In Miller's
vision of the Church, political power is of practically no
consequence, ritual and dogma maintain a small oasis of
order in a wholly chaotic world, and belief is uppermost,
belief in the justice and mercy of God, and in the potential
intelligence and constructiveness of man. Parallels with
the European Dark Ages are explicit, including the primary
worldly function of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz, which
is to preserve what scraps of written knowledge it can,
regardless of how little sense they make, until someone can
again make use of them.
Another science fictional theme, the lack of commu
nication between societies on different scientific and
technological levels, is fundamental to Part One. The
Church is the only civilization there is, and no one in it
understands the original meaning of the artifacts it dis
covers and preserves. This point is brought out by Brother
Francis' fear of the fallout shelter, and of the "fallout"
itself, believed to be a monster, by his recollection of the
priestly expedition which "disappeared" after reporting the
finding of an "intercontinental launching pad," and by
various other bits of scholarly, often folkloric informa
tion. Most of all, however, the fundamental misunderstand
ing between eras is brought out by the central symbol of the
novelette, the blueprint. Because electricity and
232
electronics are merely meaningless terms at this time, the
blueprint's only comprehensible value stems from the fact
that it was designed by one I. E. Liebowitz, whom everyone
comes to believe must be identical with the "Isaac" or
"Edward" Liebowitz who founded the Order. As a relic of
past civilization, it must be kept intact, therefore it must
be copied exactly before it fades. As a relic of the
Beatus, soon to be Saint, it deserves to be revered and in
some way glorified. As a design, supposedly conveying
information, it appears to Brother Francis "to be no more
than a network of lines connecting a patchwork of doohickii,
squiggles, quids, laminulae, and thingumbob" (p. 78). And
when he discovers that the color scheme is accidental, the
idea of "illuminating" the blueprint follows almost inevita
bly:
With the color scheme reversed, no one would recognize
the drawing at first. Certain other features could
obviously be modified. He dared change nothing that
he did not understand, but surely the parts tables and
the block-lettered information could be spread sym
metrically around the diagram on scrolls and shields.
Because the meaning of the diagram itself was obscure,
he dared not alter its shape or plan by a hair; but
since its color scheme was unimportant, it might as
well be beautiful. He considered gold inlay for the
squiggles and doohickii, but the thingumbob was too
intricate for goldwork, and a gold quid would seem
ostentatious. The quiggles just had to be done jet
black, but that meant that the lines should be off-
black, to assert the quiggles. While the unsymmet-
rical design would have to stay as it was, he could
think of no reason why its meaning would be altered
by using it as a trellis for a climbing vine, whose
branches (carefully dodging the quiggles) might be
made to furnish an impression of symmetry or render
asymmetry natural. When Brother Horner illuminated
a capital M, transmuting it into a wonderful jungle
233
of leaves, berries, branches, and perhaps a wily
serpent, it nevertheless remained legible as M.
Brother Francis saw no reason for supposing that the
same would not apply to the diagram.
The general shape, over-all, with a scrolled
border, might well become a shield, rather than the
stark rectangle which enclosed the drawing in the
print. He made dozens of preliminary sketches. At
the very top of the parchment would be a representa
tion of the Triune God, and at the very bottom--the
coat of arms of the Albertian Order, with, just
above it the image of the Beatus. (pp. 82-83)
This passage, quoted at length, which is fairly
typical of Miller's style, is one of the highlights of Part
One. A breakdown in communication, usually a good basis
for comedy, here gives rise to a train of thought completely
dissociated from the original purpose of the object being
contemplated, but which is perfectly functional and logical,
given the circumstances. As each new detail of design comes
to Brother Francis' mind, the joke is elaborated one more
step, until it seems to transcend itself, like madness
producing inspiration. As Francis muses lovingly over his
scheme, we become drawn in by Miller's empathy with him;
knowing Francis' conscious thoughts, following his bursts
of inspiration, which seem entirely authentic for a man of
his hypothetical world, we come to know him and his era
better.
For the most part it is the era which occupies
Miller's attention, an era in which survival, never too
certain, has the first priority, as is indicated by the
title ("Fiat Homo," "Let there be man"). The survival of
234
the Church and its ways, of the Order and its Memorabilia,
of the fallout shelter and its contents, is balanced by the
survival of the Wandering Jew, of the mutations (called
"the Pope's children" because of edicts demanding that all
"humans" be allowed to live), even of Francis himself.
The Age of Simplification which followed the Atomic Deluge
encouraged the survival only of those who denied their
intelligence and education or who had none; centuries later,
the effect of that period is still strong. Francis, a run
away slave from the hill tribes of Utah, has learned at the
Abbey to read and to write, and has pored over much of the
written materials available to him, but he is still a very
simple man, at age thirty-nine as at age seventeen.
Ill-trained for any kind of work outside the monastery,
physically weak (his propensity for fainting is a running
joke), intensely aware of his ignorance (not only regarding
ancient science, but also in that large area of experience
between natural and supernatural, the preternatural), he
leads an existence made only slightly less precarious by
faith, obedience, and allegiance to his Order. Timid and
mildly superstitious, he can be brave when curiosity or duty
demands it, as he demonstrates before the fallout shelter
and the band of robbers. Devout and obedient, he is yet
stubborn enough in his scrupulous honesty to endure seven
annual Lenten fasts in the desert, because he cannot swear
to his Abbot that the old man he met on the day of the
235
discovery was absolutely nothing more than an old man.
Seen from his point of view, the world in which he
lives is made up of many seemingly disconnected ideas and
events, as is fitting, since communication has been lost
not only between temporal eras and the concepts which
compose them, but also between geographical areas in the
same time period. The years are the only sure connection
between things, years whose passing is measured by the
yearly celebrations, by the ageing and death of fellow
monks, by the progress Brother Francis makes on his illumi
nated blueprint, by the fact that decisions are made in
distant places, news of which eventually makes its way to
Leibowitz Abbey. Since every year is essentially the same
as every other year, the narrative can focus on the few
events out of the ordinary which have special significance
in Francis' life. His discovery, his becoming a monk, his
interviews with the Abbot, with the postulator for and the
devil's advocate against the canonization of Leibowitz, with
the Pope, his confrontations with the robbers, these scenes
stand out against the confessions, conversations, and other
everyday activities, taking up the bulk of his time, which
are given to us in representative snatches.
Most of the scenes in Part One, but not all, involve
Francis as a participant, a not completely reliable observer
who is observed in turn by a sympathetic and understanding
narrator of our time. The difference in perspective,
236
between Francis, who understands very little, and the narra
tor, who seems to understand everything, provides most of
the humor and irony, but the mockery is gentle, and implicit
only, for the narrator never comments directly in his own
person.
Concentrating on Brother Francis, and his view of
things, the narrator caricatures the rest of the characters:
Arkos, the shaggy, blustering Abbot, whose shrewdness we
see only in his scene with Prior Cheroki, Francis' confes
sor, out of Francis' perception; Fingo, the jovial carpenter
with the spotted hide, whose major function for the story is
his carving of a wooden statue of Leibowitz; Brother Jeris,
the mocking sophist and practical man whose appointment over
Francis stops work on the blueprint for a while; Monsignor
Malfreddo Aguerra, the postulator, who countermands Jeris'
order, and whose kindliness causes Francis to idolize him;
Monsignor Flaught, the devil's advocate, whom Francis cannot
see without horns and fangs; Pope Leo XXI, a wise ruler,
despite the fact that his technical ignorance is the same as
Francis', who takes time away from his political socializing
to welcome Francis and reassure him as to the value of his
work, and whose "wink," a delightful artistic touch in
itself, amounts almost to a divine revelation to Francis of
the simultaneity of poverty and dignity; and the old Jewish
pilgrim, ugly, irascible, and mysterious, who is dressed
like the founder, whose mocking smile appears on Fingo's
237
statue, and who reminds us of the central incongruity of a
monastic order founded by a Jew, and a scientist, at that,
who becomes canonized even though his very existence cannot
be demonstrated. These are caricatures in the dictionary
sense--"exaggeration by means of deliberate simplification
and often ludicrous distortion of parts or characteris
tics"- -and they are not out of place in a story in which so
many years are compressed, in which simplicity and simplifi
cation are virtues, and in which the era itself is being
21
characterized in terms of such "representative men."
Part Two, "Fiat Lux," originally published as "And
the Light is Risen," comprises twelve chapters and 110
pages. Taking place for the most part in the same Leibowitz
Abbey, little changed by another six centuries, it focuses
not on a single man but on a confrontation between two men,
taking place in the relatively small space of a few months,
as against the many years which pass in Part One. Invited,
at his own request, Thon Taddeo Pfardentrott, a humanist
scholar from the feudal court at Texarkana, comes to the
Abbey to examine the library collection, allegedly dating
from before the Flame Deluge, and to give the secluded monks
22
a glimpse of the new age of science and enlightenment.
21
Webster's Third New International Dictionary,
ed. Philip Babcock Gove (Springfield, Massachusetts, 1961).
22
Thon Taddeo is a "humanist" scholar in that he is
participating in a revival of "classical" learning, and in
that he has a man-centered, rather than a god-centered,
viewpoint. In that context, science is just one of many
238
In some ways, Taddeo himself is enlightened, since the Memo
rabilia appear to be genuine, and the Thon's own theories
regarding electricity are demonstrated in practice; Brother
Kornhoer has developed a carbon-arc lamp, fed by a monk-
powered dynamo, which provides the scholar with illumination
in the library, to the eternal outrage of the conservative
librarian, Brother Armbruster. In some ways, the monks are
given a glimpse of a new barbarism, since the Thon's cousin
Hannegan II, illiterate ruler of Texarkana, is beginning a
war of conquest which knows no boundaries (the soldiers in
the Thon's party are busy making thorough sketches of the
Abbey's fortifications), and the fascination of the Thon
himself with new theories and old heresies causes the ageing
Dom Paulo to wonder if knowledge can ever be used properly.
The continuing debate between science and faith, which takes
place largely in Paulo's mind, is expanded by the inclusion
of other viewpoints, the positions of doubt and art
represented by old Benjamin Eleazar, a hermit who claims an
existence of thousands of years, and the Abbey's most
unwanted tenant, its anonymous Poet-in-residence. In the
end, nothing is settled, but the Thon and the Abbot do
achieve a measure of understanding, and the Abbey, retaining
human activities. To call him a "scientist" and Dom Paulo a
"humanist," on the analogy of C. P. Snow's "two cultures,"
would be even more anachronistic, and would equate "human
ism" with only one human activity, religion, which is
differentiated from science, to be sure, but also from other
human areas of endeavor.
239
control over its library, is left alone again for a while.
In an epilogue, the Poet dies a most unromantic death,
blasphemously administering "last rites" to a cavalry
officer whose men had shot the Poet, leaving him and the
officer to the buzzards.
Besides the basic framework of life in the future,
and a continuation of the theme of contact between techno
logical unequals, Part Two demonstrates its science-
fictionality by its exploitation of the old motif of the
marvelous invention, by allusions to two fragments of
science fiction within the science fiction, and by treating
one of its major characters as an archetypal scientist.
As in Part One, the background is allegorical, the
wars of conquest, the relative power and wealth of the
Church, the slowness of transportation and communication
hampering the inevitable growth of diplomacy and intellec
tual ferment clearly parallelling the developments of the
European Renaissance. The major differences lie in the
American setting, and the knowledge of prior technology.
The desirability of scientific and technological
advance is accepted by three different cultural levels: Mad
Bear and his tribe of nomads (descendants of the "Pope's
children" and similar outcasts) are interested purely in
weapons; Hannegan differs from Mad Bear only in the scope
of his ambitions, although some of his own people are more
theoretically inclined; even the Abbey adds a printing press
240
and electric lighting, within limits and with reservations.
In the case of the Abbey, the picture is perhaps more
complicated; besides being unequal to the secular Renais
sance in technology (i.e. inferior), the Church prides
itself on being unequal in the area of responsibility (i.e.
superior). Superiority, however, depends somewhat on con
text: Mad Bear and his people have their pride, too, and in
their own eyes, only warriors, braves, and buccaneers like
themselves have the right to be called "men."
The marvelous invention in this story is of course
Brother Kornhoer's light-machine, certainly a marvel for its
era. Like the illuminated blueprint of Part One, it seems
to involve an inordinate amount of labor relative to the
result: "it was necessary to keep at least four novices or
postulants continuously employed at cranking the dynamo and
adjusting the arc-gap" (p. 187). The result itself is
somewhat ambivalently viewed: its blue-white brilliance is
as "ghastly" to Dom Paulo as it is unexpected; its aid to
Thon Taddeo's researches is offset by a double injury to
his pride. Thinking at first that the lamp was preserved
from the past, and its existence kept secret, he is embar
rassed not only by his error but also by the fact that it
was someone else (and a monk at that) who demonstrated the
practical applications of his theories of optics and
electricity.
The lamp is a symbol of enlightenment, not only to
241
the Thon, but also, and especially, to Brother Kornhoer and
his assistants. During the experimental period of the
invention's development, Brother Kornhoer's continuing con
frontation with Brother Armbruster, the librarian, provides
a comic illustration of the war between science and faith,
parallelling and foreshadowing the Abbot's conflict with
the Thon. Every move and change in the library's normal
pattern of activity is greeted by the librarian as sacri
lege, especially the decision, condoned by the Abbot, to
hang the lamp itself on a hook in the alcove of the Memora
bilia, replacing a crucifix. Armbruster's approval is never
won, as he demonstrates toward the end of the story by
deriding the research of the Thon and his colleagues, but
his tacit obedience to the Abbot is apparently gained,
since we hear of no comments from him when Kornhoer and his
assistants stage a quasi-blasphemous welcome for the Thon,
in a marvelously effective scene.
The monk who watched from the head of the stairs
turned solemnly and bowed toward the fifth monk on
the landing below.
"In principio Deus," he said softly.
The fifth monk turned and bowed toward the
fourth monk at the foot of the stairs. "Caelum et
terram creavit," he murmured in turn.
The fourth monk turned toward the three who
lounged behind the machine. "Vacuus autem erat
mundus," he announced.
"Cum tenebris in superficie profundorum,"
chorused the group.
242
"Ortus est Dei Spiritus supra aquas," called
Brother KornHoer, returning his book to its shelf
with a rattling of chains.
"Gratias Creatori Spiritui,1 1 responded his
entire team.
"Dixit que Deus: 'FIAT LUX, said the inventor
in a tone of command.
The vigil on the stairs descended to take their
posts. Four monks manned the treadmill. The fifth
monk hovered over the dynamo. The sixth monk
climbed the shelf-ladder and took his seat on the
top rung, his head bumping the top of the archway.
He pulled a mask of smoke-blackened oily parchment
over his face to protect his eyes, then felt for
the lamp fixture and its thumbscrew, while Brother
Kornhoer watched him nervously from below.
"Et lux ergo facta est," he said when he had
found-the screw.
"Lucem esse bonam Deus vidit," the inventor
called tothe fifth monk.
The fifth monk bent over the dynamo with a
candle for one last look at the brush contacts.
"Et secrevit lucem a tenebris," he said at last,
continuing the lesson.
"Lucem appellavit 'diem,'" chorused the
treadmill team, "et tenebras 'noctes.'" Where
upon they set their shoulders to the turnstile
beams.
Axles creaked and groaned. The wagon-wheel
dynamo began to spin, its low whir becoming a
moan and then a whine as the monks strained and
grunted at the drive-mill. The guardian of the
dynamo watched anxiously as the spokes blurred
with speed and became a film. "Vespere occaso,"
he began, then paused to lick two fingers and
touch them to the contacts. A spark snapped.
"Lucifer!" he yelped, leaping back, then
finished lamely: "ortus est et primo die."
243
"CONTACT!" said Brother Kornhoer, as Dom Paulo,
Thon Taddeo and his clerk [sic] descended the
stairs.
The monk on the ladder struck the arc. A sharp
spfft!--and blinding light flooded the vaults with
a brilliance that had not been seen in twelve
centuries. (pp. 183-184)
As in the case of Brother Francis' blueprint, the
incongruous combination of technological practicality and
Christian ritual is a joke to the twentieth-century reader,
but also a matter of profound importance to the partici
pants. The recitation of the first verses of Genesis is as
much a magical incantation, a prayer for success, as it is
a spectacle (it is seen only by Brother Armbruster, whom it
would not be calculated to impress favorably). And the
manner in which the light is received, both by Paulo and by
Taddeo, is humorous only to the reader; the embarrassment
suffered on all sides is significant, and results gradually
in somewhat changed attitudes on the part of all three
principals, reviving Kornhoer's humility as it increases the
doubt and suspicion of the Abbot and the scholar for each
other.
Other science-fictional features of the novelette
include a pseudo-biblical pastiche purporting to be an
account of the Flame Deluge and its aftermath, apparently
written "a few decades after the death of Saint Leibowitz"
(p. 182), and read to Thon Taddeo as an example of what
little there is in the way of accurate written records of
the catastrophe. Acknowledged by the Church to be somewhat
244
fanciful and allegorical, it is received by the Thon with a
skepticism which is curiously lacking in his analysis of a
contrasting, but similarly symbolic document he comes upon
in the Memorabilia. This document--described by Paulo in
these words: "a fragment of a play, or a dialogue, it
seems. . . . It's something about some people creating some
artificial people as slaves. And the slaves revolt against
their makers" (p. 223)--the reader can recognize, without
its being quoted, as an excerpt from Karel Capek's play,
R. U. R. The Thon, anxious to avoid thinking of human
beings as responsible creatures, leaps to the hypothesis
that "Man was not created until shortly before the fall of
the last civilization" (p. 222). The ensuing argument,
wherein the Thon preaches the need for "freedom to specu
late," at the same time that Dom Paulo recites to him the
story of the Fall of Man, is the climax of the novelette.
The Abbot reveals Hannegan's edict, abolishing the Church
(cf. England's Henry VIII), Brother Kornhoer replaces the
lamp with the crucifix, and the Thon departs in an atmos
phere of strained, but determined politeness.
Perhaps the central science-fiction motif of Part
Two, and of the novel as a whole, is the Thon himself, the
one character in the whole book who stands unequivocally in
favor of science, research, and speculation. Since he is
also the only character concerning whose background we are
given any specific information, we may find his single-
245
mindedness somewhat suspect. Illegitimate, but the only
heir of Hannegan's uncle, he was raised by Benedictine
monks, and not restored to his birthright until age fifteen,
from which time he excelled in learning, the one area in
which his rival the Prince was not adept. But whatever its
emotional source, and however unjustified we may regard his
conviction of its superiority over other viewpoints, a
detached, unemotional rationality is his key characteristic.
We see it accompanied by a cynical contempt for mankind in
general when we first meet Thon Taddeo in company with
Marcus Apollo, the papal nuncio to Hannegan's court. Chaf
ing at the need for diplomacy with a fellow-intellectual,
Taddeo demonstrates a practical command of it, along with a
talent for languages and a tolerance for cultural differ
ences, when next we see him among the savages of Mad Bear's
clan, whose political arrangements with Hannegan he chooses
to ignore, as long as they enable him to travel safely to
the Abbey. By the time he arrives there, we fully expect
him to deal politely with the monks, but skeptically with
their Memorabilia, as with their beliefs, and we can under
stand Dom Paulo's anxiety over what should be an occasion
for rejoicing, the rediscovery of the Order's papers by
someone who can understand them.
Surprisingly enough, relations are fairly smooth for
most of his visit. The embarrassment caused by the light-
machine is dismissed, if not forgotten, and the political
246
tensions outside the monastery are not talked about; the
Thon's enthusiasm over the authenticity of the Memorabilia
is a comfort to Paulo, diminished only slightly by the
scholar's unhappiness at the documents' relative inaccessi
bility. Paulo is so pleased that he coaxes Taddeo to give
a lecture to the community, and even hopes to get the Thon
to act politically, to do something about Hannegan's
officers who are mapping the Abbey's fortifications.
Despite the risk of failures in communication on both
sides--Taddeo fears the distortion of mathematical ideas in
lay language, and expects the resistance of religious
prejudice--the scholar agrees, setting the stage for a
festive, and embarrassing occasion.
In a well-constructed chapter, the Thon reveals the
nature of his researches and also, despite the formality of
the setting, the nature of his own character, therefore by
implication of the scientific mind in general. During the
dinner, the Poet embarrasses everyone by showing up, by
talking about the soldiers' sketches, and by direct and
indirect slurs on Taddeo's sense of responsibility. Each
of the three parts of the lecture has implications beyond
its surface: the Thon's amazement at his rediscoveries is
coupled with resentment that the Memorabilia were not
recognized before; his report on the research in which his
colleagues are involved offends Brother Armbruster, whose
outburst embarrasses the community; the conclusion of the
247
lecture, a prediction of change, unwilled, inevitably bring
ing suffering, earns Taddeo the silent scorn of Dom Paulo,
who sees what the Poet saw, an evasion of responsibility.
This insight, twice voiced, is underscored by another inter
ruption, practically ending the speech and the chapter:
Benjamin, the old Jew, enters the hall, examines the Thon at
arm's length, and pronounces his judgment, "It's still not
Him" (p. 208).
The Thon, of course, had never claimed to be the
Messiah, and would have scorned the idea if it were broached
to him. The sense that he might be more than a man of
superior intellect was fostered by the involvement of
others, especially the desire on the part of Dom Paulo for
objective proof that his, and the Order's worldly occupation
was not in vain. Sharing Paulo's viewpoint throughout most
of the novelette, sharing the thoughts, insights, and
philosophy of only his mind, which is preoccupied with his
own doubts in the face of a gastric illness bringing him
close to death, the reader is required to make a difficult
judgment regarding the Thon. However much in favor of
reason and enlightenment, and opposed to superstition and
ignorance we may be, we tend to sympathize with the Abbot
over the savant.
Taddeo's attempt at bribing Kornhoer to come to
Texarkana, his absurd interpretation of R. U. R., and the
actions of his cousin, abolishing the Church and barbarously
248
murdering Marcus Apollo, merely confirm our judgment, so
that we may overlook the significance of his farewell scene
with the Abbot. The fact that their shaking hands is, in
the Abbot's eyes, "no token of any truce but only of mutual
respect between foes" (p. 227), represents a gain for the
Church. The Thon is no longer actively contemptuous toward
it and, while he promises nothing on their behalf, he has
already performed one political act, in confiscating the
sketches of the Abbey's fortifications. If he is not an
ally, he is at least a determined neutral, and he seems to
have learned something intangible, in terms of people, as
well as to have filled his notebooks with practical, scien
tific knowledge.
The Thon is but one member of a well-drawn gallery
of significant characters in this novelette. The spirit of
the age, which dominates Part One, and which plays an impor
tant role here, seems secondary to the individual persons,
although their very individuality seems to be one of the
cardinal features of the Renaissance era, as Miller
envisions it. Kornhoer and Armbruster are not mere comic
relief; their arguments stem from differing interpretations
on how best to serve their God. Marcus Apollo, urbane,
witty, even flippant, provides a good introduction to the
court of Hannegan; Miller's choice of him for Hannegan to
make an example of is calculated to wrench our emotions.
Hongan Os, or Mad Bear, the nomad tribal chieftain, for all
249
his stereotyped bravado and ostentatious cunning, is seen as
"just and kindly" in his own cultural context, as was the
robbers' leader in Part One, and his cruelty and brutality,
perhaps because they are less effective and of narrower
scope, pale beside the barbarity of the supposedly civilized
leader whom we never meet, Hannegan.
The most important characters, however, after the
Thon and his opponent in argument, Dom Paulo, through whose
wise but ageing mind we see so much of what takes place,
are the Poet and the Jew. As representatives of art and
doubt, they widen the scope of the intellectual world from
what might otherwise be merely a debate between science and
faith. Each is involved in a confrontation with each of
the major disputants, but merely by their existence, being
the characters that they are, they provide a commentary on
the inadequacy of single categories of thinking to provide
answers to human problems.
The Poet, like the Thon, is creative and irrespon
sible; unlike the Thon, he knows he is irresponsible.
Playing the fool, he pricks the conscience of others; this
function of his is made especially clear by his clowning
with his artificial eye, the "removable conscience" which
he cedes to Thon Taddeo, who will have greater need of it.
Distrusting both religion and science, both the Church and
the State, he is nevertheless dependent upon one or the
other for patronage. Indeed, the Poet is somewhat more
250
committed to and affected by their values than he would have
us believe. For all his sour cynicism and apparent isolated
self-sufficiency, it is an act of senseless gallantry that
gets him shot when, having left the Abbey, he happens upon
some soldiers mutilating a girl refugee they have already
killed. And when he is already dying, it is a sense of duty
as much as it is annoyance which causes him to parody the
role of a priest, i.e. to "absolve" the sadistic officer he
has already mortally wounded, and on whose behalf he himself
has been shot, by cutting his throat.
The old Jewish hermit, Benjamin Eleazar, also acts
as a conscience, a passive and almost eternal one. He
claims to have spoken with, and to have buried Brother
Francis, during his "former career" as a "wanderer," and
gives his age alternately as 3,209 and 5,408 years. Since
the year is A.D. 3174, the first figure would make him at
least a contemporary of Ahasuerus, the legendary "Wandering
Jew," commanded by Christ to await his return; the second
23
figure would make him as old as the Jewish people. Dom
Paulo prefers to believe that the Jew is merely identifying
himself with his community (as Paulo identifies himself with
23
The Creation is supposed to have taken place in
3761 B.C., according to Webster's (above, note 21), p. 2648,
but Miller's character makes no claim to be as old as that.
Five thousand four hundred eight years before 3174 A.D.
would bring us to 2234 B.C., which is even earlier than
Abraham, according to most scholarly estimates: Bernhard
Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament (Englewood Cliffs,
New Jersey” 1957), pp. 16-22.
251
his), but Miller provides us with enough impressions of the
uncanny for us to see that in this fiction, at least, the
Wandering Jew is a reality. Proud of his heritage, Benjamin
is shrewd enough to compromise it, in difficult times; the
basic invocation of Judaism stands by his house as it
should, but it faces the wall rather than the outside world.
Bearing a burden for all mankind, he shames the Abbot who
comes to visit him and who finds it so difficult to bear his
own individual burden. The hermit's mocking smile, so
similar to the smile on the wooden statue of Saint Leibowitz
in the Abbot's study, measures against bitter experiences
of the past the desire of the Abbot, and of his times, to
proclaim a new dawn, if not a new Messiah. That he may see
for himself, the old Jew asks Paulo to bring the Thon by his
hermitage; since the request is refused, Benjamin's visit to
the Abbey, and the shock it produces, is motivated well in
advance.
The strength of these characters, their dramatic
confrontations, the philosophical focus provided by the
Abbot's point-of-view, his dialogues, and his internal
monologues, combine with other effective devices to make
this story an excellent novelette, and a powerful midsection
for the novel. The third section, like the first, has its
own peculiar virtues, but the weight of the action and
thought of the whole turns on this middle portion, where
the powers and ideas dominant in the other eras meet as
252
equals.
Part Three, "Fiat Voluntas Tuas," originally pub
lished as "The Last Canticle," is the shortest of the three
parts, consisting of seven chapters and eighty-five pages.
The scene is still Leibowitz Abbey, much the same after
another 600 years, but having added an annex of modern
buildings, including scientific laboratories, across the
road which is now a six-lane "robot highway." The time is
once again the beginning of an atomic war, from which the
Church hopes, once again, to salvage something. While
Brother Joshua, of the Order of Leibowitz, struggles with
his conscience, trying to determine whether he is worthy to
command the starship full of clergy and children which the
Church is sending off to Earth’s colony at Alpha Centauri,
Abbot Jethrath Zerchi tries to keep alive a shred of
religious teaching in this world, particularly that part of
it which is collapsing near the Abbey. Zerchi's problems,
which occupy the foreground of the novelette, include:
Dr. Cors and the secular forces which seek to restrict the
definition of evil to "pain," and to eliminate pain via
euthanasia camps; Mrs. Grales, a two-headed crone who seeks
baptism for her new head, "Rachel," trying to get "born";
the daily business of the Abbey; and perhaps most important
of all, himself. Beaten at everything, Dom Jethrath finally
comes to terms with himself when, trapped in the rubble of
the bombed-out Abbey, he awaits death in extreme pain,
253
receiving "last rites" from Rachel, who has at last emerged,
unbaptized, to take over the body of Mrs. Grales. The last
chapter, an epilogue, recounts briefly the departure of the
ship which carries what hope for culture, civilization, and
humanity the Church can offer, but which carries as well its
share of doubt and fear, for all that the Wandering Jew and
a decimated Earth are left behind.
The era and its futuristic technology being clearly
identified with our own near future, barring catastrophe,
this part of the novel is the most obviously science-
fictional of the three. Compressed into a time span of only
a few days, wherein all actions are dwarfed by the menace of
total annihilation, limited to a few characters, superfi
cially developed, and relying to a large extent on narrative
gimmicks and science-fictional gambits, this novelette seems
also the least effective composition of the three. As
inevitable a sequel to Part Two, given Miller's cyclical
view of history, as Part Two is a sequel to Part One, it
seems nevertheless more random and arbitrary in the selec
tion of scenes and actions that it displays.
The futuristic hardware, so unreassuringly familiar,
includes robot highways, spaceships that have reached other
planets, world-wide television relayed by artificial satel
lites, atomic weapons, and refined devices for measuring
and predicting the weather. One machine, an electronic
translator, Miller devotes several pages to; the failure of
254
the "Abominable Autoscribe" to serve Abbot Zerchi provides
the author with an opportunity for slapstick humor, at the
same time that it introduces us to the hot temper of Dom
Jethrath and to the feeling that man once again has become
overly reliant on machines which he cannot control. Another
machine, the atomic bomb, the Church refers to as "Lucifer,"
bent again on causing man to decree his own destruction.
Another, the starship which carries away the pilgrims, is
also a science-fictional cliche, but here it is viewed with
some irony; like the blueprint and the light-machine of
Parts One and Two, the starship seems an inefficient use of
man's resources, involving as it does long hours and awkward
methods for what may well be a meager result.
As endurance and the clash of wills provide the
frameworks for Parts One and Two, fragmentation is the key
to Part Three. Episodes are more or less peripherally
related to one another, the scene changing jerkily within
each chapter. Televised press conferences enter the Abbey
in chapters 24 and 25, as Joshua is made acquainted with
his task, Mrs. Grales and an old Jew named Lazarus are
introduced, and the Abbot starts to face his own responsi
bilities. Chapter 26 mainly concerns Joshua's night of
decision, and his departure for New Rome. Chapters 27 and
28 set Zerchi against Dr. Cors, who wins from the Abbot a
young girl and her child, burned by radiation. Chapter 29
is the scene of Dom Jethrath's death, and of Rachel's birth,
255
while 30 is a detached epilogue. The motivation of persons'
actions is generally presented as selfish, even where it
appears to be altruistic or "for the good of the community."
Characters seem to avoid contact with each other, Joshua
with Mrs. Grales, Zerchi with Rachel, Dr. Cors with Zerchi,
Lazarus with the world. Even the machines, which can pro
vide such efficient means of communication, transmit only
diplomatic exercises in non-communication, or they don't
work at all, e.g. the translator breaks down, the radio
transmitter of the Abbey is closed by the authorities.
The narrative form is also discontinuous, beginning
with a free verse poem, entering into two press conferences
reported in dialogue style, involving typographical tricks
in its demonstration of the automatic translator's failures,
and including letters, telegrams, and radio newscasts, as
well as the more conventional devices of debate and internal
monologue. What continuity there is in this world appar
ently lies in its connections with the past. Francis and
Leibowitz, Hannegan and Thon Taddeo (whom history has
confused with a colleague, Thon Esser Shon) are alluded to,
the wooden statue of Brother Fingo and a slim book of verse
by "Saint Poet of the Miraculous Eyeball" have survived
within the Abbey, an old Jew named Lazarus exists, whose
smile seems familiar, and names from our own history are
mixed into the stew as well. The most important reference
to history, repeated and dwelled upon by both Joshua and
256
Dom Jethrath, is the apparent conclusion that nothing is
learned from history, that man is doomed to repeat his own
mistakes over and over, including acts of self-annihilation.
But with death, in some cases, can come rebirth, the
only hope held out for man by this third novelette. If
there is an Abbot killed, and a Mrs. Grales must die,
perhaps a Rachel may spring forth, embodying the Immaculate
Conception, though she seems to grow out of the corruption
of radiation-induced mutation and of fornication. If there
is wholesale destruction in the world, and a Dr. Cors to
ease the pain with voluntary death, there may also be a
Brother Joshua to lead a tiny remnant to a promised land,
much in the manner of his namesakes in the Old and New
Testaments. The hope is slim, but it is all there is, if
Miller is right about man's predilection to use power and
knowledge destructively.
In such a doom-laden atmosphere, carrying such
symbolic loads, it is not too surprising that the characters
of Part Three are not well developed. Dr. Cors, polite but
legalistic, a pacifist and an atheist, is little more than a
symbol for the moral helplessness of science. Mrs. Grales-
Rachel, though she is vividly described, is never allowed to
show that she has a personality, in either guise; only the
symbol, the suggestion, the obscurity remains. Brother
Joshua, a low comedy caricature with his red beard and his
propensity for bathing naked without making sure of his
257
privacjT', is not perfectly convincing as the dedicated monk
who agrees, after long soul-searching, to accept command of
the starship. The only character developed at any length
is the Abbot, whose flaming temper seems to be matched in
intensity only by his fear of death and the uncertainty of
his belief, all of which we share at times from the inside.
His failures, to deal with machines, to communicate with
Lazarus, to overcome the arguments of the wounded young
girl, to withstand the power of Dr. Cors and of his own
temper (Zerchi punches the doctor in the nose), to baptize
Rachel, to face his own death (until he has seen in Rachel
the promise of resurrection), are failures of twentieth-
century man, and of man in general. He has no successes,
nor does mankind in Part Three, or perhaps in the whole of
A Canticle lor Leibowitz.
Part Three in the novel varies considerably from the
magazine version. The press conferences, the episode of the
translation machine, the Abbot's tale of the mercy-killing
of his cat as an argument against euthanasia, the rejection
by Rachel of his baptism and her administration of last
rites are all additions to the original version. Many
episodes, paragraphs, and lines are completely rewritten,
or at least significantly revised, to reduce the melodra
matic, telegraphed, too direct style and treatment of
characters, symbols, issues. Yet the whole does not fully
hang together, nor does the effect of fragmentation fully
258
succeed, so that we are left with a novelette which does not
seem complete in itself, and which depends to a large extent
upon its relationship to the total book for meaning and for
success as a story.
The relationship between the three distinct stories
is multifaceted, some elements remaining constant through
out, some being repeated with variations, some forming a
continuous progression. Tone and style are fairly constant,
allowing for deliberate variations and special effects,
conveying the character of an omniscient narrator, whose
sympathy for individuals and their plights is tinged with
mild irony, an observer not completely detached, who is yet
able to rationalize and explain, as well as to observe and
report. The physical setting of most of the action,
Leibowitz Abbey, is relatively constant, although even
there, as outside, the phenomena of growth are in evidence.
In keeping with the setting and the role of Churchmen as
protagonists, the use of Church ritual and the Latin
language is continuous. Each of the three parts in fact
displays a pastiche of Church writing and of a significant
ritual of its times: Part One finds Francis whispering
"versicles from the Litany of the Saints" (pp. 26-27) and
observing canonization ceremonies in New Rome; Part Two
gives us the narrative of the Flame Deluge and the chanting
which accompanies the rediscovery of light, as well as the
relatively secular ritual of a public lecture; Part Three
259
opens "Versicles by Adam, Rejoinders by the Crucified"
(pp. 235-236), and presents Brother Joshua's ritual of soul-
searching, as well as the secular rituals of press confer
ences and news releases.
Each section has its Abbot as a major figure, with
his point-of-view being adopted by the narrator in Parts
Two and Three. Each section has a Wandering Jew, who may
be the same man under different names, identified by the
initials L Z, the names Benjamin and Eleazar, and the name
<2 A
Lazarus in that order. Besides sharing letters of his
name with the Abbey's Saint Leibowitz, the old Jew shares
the Saint's ethnic background, and has the same kind of
mocking smile as the wooden statue of the Saint carved in
Part One and occupying a featured place in the Abbots'
studies of Parts Two and Three. Each section has its
radiation-induced deformities, the blue-headed goat of Part
Two playing a rather small role in comparison with the band
of robbers in Part One and Mrs. Grales (not to mention her
six-legged dog Priscilla) in Part Three. Each section has
its buzzards, who feast on Brother Francis and on the Poet,
and who await the death of Abbot Zerchi; in the epilogues
to Parts One and Two, Miller offers a buzzard's-eye view of
the world as being intended for their nourishment and even
for their philosophical consideration, whereas the lone
0 /
See Joseph Gaer, The Legend of the Wandering Jew
(New York, 1961).
260
buzzard of Part Three is wet and singed and presumably dying
from radiation, and a shark, far out at sea, deep under
water, and 'Very hungry that season" closes the final
epilogue. Formal similarities between the novelettes
include the repetition of a 600-year gap between the
stories, the consistent use of epilogues, and the employment
of a varied point-of-view. Although one character is at the
center of consciousness for most of each story, some
episodes, even whole chapters, involve a break with that
point-of-view; each part has scenes in nature, scenes at
court, an epilogue involving death which that character
could not witness, making perfectly clear the narrator's
role in arranging and juxtaposing the material presented to
us.
Progression in time is indicated both within and
between the chapters. The chapters are continuously
numbered, and the action within them is handled in chrono
logical order. All three eras share the same ancient
history (the reader's real world), but they distort it some
what. Fact and folklore tend to blend events, individuals,
and institutions into a homogeneous past, even if profes
sional historians try to guard against such distortion.
This process is shown in operation not only in terms of our
hypothetical future's remembrance of us, but also in terms
of the assessment by each of these hypothetical eras of its
predecessors in the novel. The whole pattern, kept in mind
261
for us by the narrator's choice of historical parallels, as
well as by philosophical observations made by his charac
ters, is a pattern of history repeating itself, in essen
tials rather than detail, as a result of a kind of racial
hybris. Miller's Dark Ages, Renaissance, and Age of Tech
nology succeed each other not merely in time, but also in
growth, biological, sociological, and especially technolog
ical. The world outside the Abbey becomes progressively
larger, richer, and more powerful, as we see from glimpses
of its courts, its spread of civilization, even the growth
of population in the neighborhood of the Abbey, itself; the
town of Sanly Bowitts which interacts with the Abbey in
Part Two did not exist in Part One and has grown into a city
by the time of Part Three. Man's geographical dominance
expands progressively, even reaching other stars by Part
Three, and the contact of the Abbey and of the Church grows
with it. More area is involved in each novelette than in
its predecessor and, coupled with a reduction in the time-
span allotted to the action of the narrative, this expansion
of horizons results in a sense of increasing speed, of more
frenetic activity (however directed) with the passage of
years.
In each period, the level of scientific knowledge
and the rate of technological advance, i.e. the degree of
man's command over his environment is suggested as one of
the most important measures of a culture's status, even of
262
its identity. The narrator's sympathy for this view is
apparent in Parts Two and Three, where he shows his own
knowledge to technology and of technical terminology to be
superior to that of his characters. The apparent cynicism
of Part Three illustrates a bitterness over man's continued
inability to control himself and his technology, but not an
abandonment of the position that an increase in control
over the environment is a good in itself. His intellectual
commitment to the preservation and increase of scientific
knowledge is not single-minded, however, nor is he blind to
the defects of the amoral scientistic mentality. Thus he
balances science against art, and doubt, and especially
faith, in the form of characters in Part Two, as general
modes of inquiry and forms of knowledge throughout, and sets
the pattern of interrelationships against a backdrop of the
centuries, of uninvolved nature, and of a blank and opaque
universe.
The Order of Leibowitz is also committed to the
expansion of knowledge, including but not restricted to
scientific knowledge. And since we see almost everything
from the viewpoint of the Abbots and monks of Leibowitz
Abbey, we are involved with them in a curious, or perhaps
rather a darkly ironic, contradiction of beliefs. As the
level of scientific knowledge rises with the passage of
time, a growth to which they are pledged, the balance of
power changes drastically between secular and religious
263
forces. Thus science and technology are put to use in the
service of political power and, as in our own world,
discoveries which are neutral in themselves are both good
and evil in practical application.
This progression is underscored by the central image
pattern of light. "Illumination” in Part One is an artistic
process, used anonymously to glorify, for religious reasons,
the presumed maker of a blueprint which no one living can
read or understand ("make light of"). The age is far from
"enlightened" about its past, or about the knowledge
possessed by the people of that past, mere remnants of which
are retained. The unimportance of the blueprint as a
conveyor of information is stressed by Brother Francis'
discovery of the fact that its color scheme is arbitrary
and accidental, making it possible for him to reverse the
pattern of "light on dark," much as time has reversed man's
relationship to the vast unknown. "Light" in Part Two is a
technical process, a symbol for knowledge, and a symbol of
desecration. Brother Kornhoer's light-machine brilliantly
illuminates the dark alcove of the library which holds the
Memorabilia, in order that Thon Taddeo may be able to read,
understand, and take advantage of what no one has been able
to comprehend for centuries. The charge of desecration,
which Brother Armbruster levels at the inventor, is perhaps
not meant to be taken seriously, but Dom Paulo calls the
brilliance of the lamp "hellish," and the monk who checks
264
the spark yells "Lucifer!" as he leaps back from it in the
middle of the ceremony which attends the machine's introduc
tion to the Abbot and the Thon. And Taddeo is "enlightened"
only in a narrow, secular, scientific sense, not in terms of
faith, morality, or personal responsibility. Taddeo's
description of Kornhoer's light as "bright as a thousand
torches" (p. 185), recalls descriptions of the H-Bomb in our
world as "brighter than a thousand suns." Appropriately
enough, the nuclear weapons of Part Three are referred to
as Lucifer, thus identifying them with light (they are an
end-product of centuries of "enlightened" research), with
the evening star (Venus, goddess of love, but also a symbol
of twilight, and of approaching death), and with a certain
archetypal dark angel (who fell through pride, like that
which man displays in his own power, in his own reason, and
in himself). But even in Part Three, light is not totally
denigrated, as we see from Brother Joshua's meditation on
fire as he keeps his vigil, making up his mind to accept
the role allotted him:
Someone had opened the abbey doors. Monks were leav
ing quietly for their cells. Only a dim glow spilled
from the doorway into the courtyard. The light was
dim in the church. Joshua could see only a few
candles and the dim red eye of the sanctuary lamp.
The twenty-six of his brethren [who would also be on
the starship] were just visible where they knelt,
waiting. Someone closed the doors again, but not
quite for through a crack he could still see the red
dot of the sanctuary lamp. Fire kindled in worship,
burning in praise, burning gently in adoration there
in its red receptacle. Fire, loveliest of the four
elements of the world, and yet an element too in Hell.
265
While it burned adoringly in the core of the Temple,
it had also scorched the life from a city, this
night, and spewed its venom over the land. How
strange of God to speak from a burning bush, and of
Man to make a symbol of Heaven into a symbol of Hell.
(p. 273)
How strange of God to speak at all, the context sug
gests, as Brother Joshua hears a slithering sound, which may
issue from a snake (in the garden, of course), and inter
prets it as an omen from God at the same time that he throws
a rock at it. How foolish of man, from some perspectives,
to make a symbol of things that do not exist, and yet how
typical. For all of Miller's irony and satire, his sympa
thies are clearly with the monks, who at least have some
thing to believe in and, believing in it, behave like decent
human beings. The rituals of the Church, for all that they
may be perfectly useless in any objective sense, do at least
offer subjective comfort, uniting men in hope and brother
hood, even in the face of death and annihilation. The
progression of titles of the novelettes shows what hope, and
what little hope, the Church can offer. Fiat Homo, "let
there be man," is a plea for survival, for a chance to do
something "worthwhile." Fiat Lux, "let there be light,"
echoes God's command in Genesis, and suggests the inevita
bility of the rise in secular learning. Finally, Fiat
Voluntas Tuas, "(let) thy will be done," with its echoes of
Christ's acquiescence to death, suggests an abandonment of
any hope that man, without any reference point outside
himself, can guide his own destiny.
266
From this religious or quasi-religious viewpoint,
secular forces, including empirical science, must be
regarded as having failed man, not just once (the nuclear
holocaust in our own immediate future) but twice (the total
disaster of Part Three). Power, with regard to people as
well as environment, seems to beget only more power; the
growth of society demands ever more growth; science recog
nizes as goals only the acquisition of more knowledge, and
the perfection of more tools and techniques to obtain it.
The growth of science and technology seems to lead to a
more mechanized way of living and thinking, whereby society
as a whole becomes more or less scientistic. Empirically,
like Dr. Cors, it recognizes only pain as being "evil";
relativistically, it recognizes no values except its own
aggrandizement, like Hannegan and by implication the polit
ical blocs of the thirty-eighth century; deterministically,
it follows the "inevitable" path of growth and destruction
suggested by Thon Taddeo.
But for all of its dangers, the scientific world
view seems to appeal to Miller, intellectually, in this
novel. His language is often technical or quasi-technical,
and he assumes a superiority to his characters not only in
terms of technological training, but also in terms of his
grand perspective overlooking the centuries, quite similar
267
25
to that of John Campbell's "Universe-Directed" scientist.
The time spanned by the whole, the irony directed at
characters whose command of history is weak, as is their
ability to distinguish between history and folklore, the
historical allusions contained in characters' names, appar
ently unknown to them, all these suggest the narrator's
role as a historian, a kind of social scientist. But the
view of man as a creature subject to natural laws (much as
the buzzards are) , about which he can dispute (much as the
buzzards do), but which can be determined and plotted in
terms of arithmetical and geometrical progressions, involves
theory as well as the observation and selection of materials
necessary for history. The theory involved is at least
agnostic, if not atheistic, positing no knowable God or
meaning in the universe and eternity which form the backdrop
for this mere 1,800 years of narrative. From this perspec
tive, both science and religion are inadequate in themselves
to supply man with knowledge and to guide his conduct. And
indeed it is not merely the irony of historicism with which
the Wandering Jew views the world and its happenings that
causes Miller to hold up almost everything he describes to
a kind of melancholy ridicule.
It may be that the Poet's "slim volume of verse"
which Dom Jethrath Zerchi reads in Part Three contains a
25
John W. Campbell, Jr., "Science Fiction and the
Opinion of the Universe," Saturday Review, May 12, 1956,
pp. 9-10, 42-43.
268
clue to the meaning of the novel:
The book was a satirical dialogue in verse between
two agnostics who were attempting to establish by
natural reason alone that the existence of God could
not be established by natural reason alone. They
managed only to demonstrate that the mathematical
limit of an infinite sequence of "doubting the cer
tainty with which something doubted is known to be
unknowable when the 'something doubted' is still a
preceding statement of 'unknowability' of something
doubted, that the limit of this process at infinity
can only be equivalent to a statement of absolute
certainty, even though phrased as an infinite series
of negations of certainty. The text bore traces of
St. Leslie's theological calculus, and even as a
poetic dialogue between an agnostic identified only
as "Poet" and another only as "Thon," it seemed to
suggest a proof of the existence of God by an epis-
temological method, but the versifier had been a
satirist; neither poet nor don relinquished his
agnostic premises after the conclusion of absolute
certainty had been reached, but concluded instead
that: Non cogitamus, ergo nihil sumus. (p. 289)
This passage about a satire is itself a satire of theolog
ical disputation, of mathematical-scientific means of
reaching a decision, and of poetry and literary criticism,
and suggests that Miller, too, in A Canticle for Leibowitz,
is denying the reader any "conclusion of absolute cer
tainty." Although he appears to be sympathetic toward all
of the characters with whom he deals, he also views them
all with a sense of irony suggesting they are all agnostics;
those religious persons whom we see going beyond mere fear
and ritual in their thinking are doubters, as all the non
religious persons appear to be. Miller's irony does not
stop there; it comes out also in events (and their misinter
pretation) , in situations (some of which are broadly
humorous), even in phrases (where puns and comic allusions
269
frequently lurk). In some cases, since the various perspec
tives adopted (religion, science, history, art, eternal
skepticism) tend to subsume each other, the irony cuts two
ways (or more). As we saw was the case with the blueprint,
and with the light-machine, the Poet's book of verse, seen
from other perspectives, has its serious meaning as well.
Although the Poet's book, according to Miller's
description, satirizes theology, science, and poetry, it may
be that it treats them as mistakes, due to human limita
tions, but mistakes which are accepted, because of the
limited viewpoint of isolated disciplines, as Truth. This
interpretation would seem to bring the Poet's book into
alignment with Miller's book, in which each discipline is
seen as inadequate from others' perspectives. Taken at all
seriously, the Poet's book asserts not only the impossibil
ity of knowing, or of proving God in any objective manner,
but also the necessity of using whatever tools we have--
observation, reason, mathematics, science--however faulty
their approximation to truth may be, in order to know
anything at all. In other words, man may be doomed to fail
ultimately at whatever he attempts, but he is also doomed
(or destined) to keep trying.
The Poet's book stops at the nihilistic positions
arrived at (and also started from) by two individuals.
Miller's book carries the problem of knowledge further, into
its relationship with society, culture, the community.
270
Society may be ignorant and blind, but without its support
and transmission of culture, each individual would be
totally ignorant and uncomprehending. And whatever knowl
edge an individual may be able to arrive at is likely to be
passed on only by those who care, i.e. a community of like-
minded persons. Such a community, caring even for that
knowledge which they do not understand, is the Albertian
Order of Leibowitz, but some kind of community, or sub
culture, stands behind the characters outside the Church, as
well. The process of transmission is perhaps best seen at
work within the monastic community where, theoretically at
least, problems of sex, family, and biological inheritance
do not complicate what is essentially a matter of the
intellect. Verbal and mathematical language, and to an
extent the lines and shapes of art, in relatively permanent
form (i.e. capable of enduring generations, perhaps
centuries), communicate from mind to mind what best (and
worst) approximations of truth individuals are capable of.
And a monastic community, which cannot breed its successors,
can only survive and perpetuate itself through education,
appealing to individuals through their mental faculties.
Biological survival by mankind may come first, but
once it is assured (as in Parts One and Three), the purely
cultural phenomenon of the community (even anti-biological
in the case of religious orders) is needed to safeguard what
knowledge is needed for cultural survival. This at least
271
would appear to be the theory accounting for the establish
ment of the Order of Leibowitz, before Miller's novel
begins, and for its mission to the colonies on other worlds,
as the novel ends. In keeping with the satiric intent of
the Poet's book, however, Miller's book also implies that
the theory is flawed, that mankind as a whole does not want
the kind of knowledge that the Church has to offer, and
that a tiny remnant at best is all that the Church can ever
salvage from the ruins of civilization.
The Poet’s book also suggests another level of
interpretation. Miller writes that "Abbot Zerchi soon tired
of trying to decide whether the book was high intellectual
comedy or more [mere?] epigrammatic buffoonery" (p. 289).
But neither the Abbot nor the narrator suggests that the
book is not poetry, i.e. not entertaining and aesthetically
pleasing. Clearly, A Canticle for Leibowitz is entertaining
and aesthetically pleasing, whatever interpretation we may
give to its philosophical content.
As an entertainment, the novel is a story, or three
stories, about people, about their joys and pleasures, about
their thoughts, and about their personal struggles, with
their faith, with their environment, with themselves. At
this level, the reader is made to feel such things as
survival, discovery, and frustration, which bulk so large
in the intellectual content of the book, even as the comic
effects amuse him and predispose him to sympathy with the
272
characters. The comedy, however, and the irony congruent
with the narrator's vast perspective make it nearly impos
sible to identify with the characters, leading us more
toward a position of relating ourselves intellectually, to
their philosophical stances, and to the oblique historical
parallels with our own past and present. The characters,
themselves, seem to find complete commitment to an idea
difficult to achieve, however strongly they may be shown as
wanting to believe in it, and their relatively cerebral
involvement is reinforced by the narrator's rationality and
perspective.
The typically science-fictional tendency to involve
the head before the heart is evident in Miller's style, too,
which is entertaining in the way that cultured, intelligent
conversation is. Seldom startling, his style is witty, yet
relatively formal, and distinctive enough to maintain an
aesthetic distance between reader and story, encouraging
critical observation and appreciation. Although the
directness, obviousness, and simplification of pulp style
had not been blatant in the original versions of the
novelettes, Miller added dignity to his revised narrative
by means of longer sentences, more sonorous rhythms, and
less use of colloquial diction. Specialized words from
technology and theology were already in frequent use in the
earlier versions, as were words and sentences from foreign
languages, from Latin of course, but also from Hebrew (in
273
Hebrew script, the English translation of which is given),
with an additional snatch of German to bring us into the
industrial totalitarianism of Part Three. The net effect is
a certain measure of weight and seriousness and scope,
contributing to the narrator's air of omniscience but also
to the dignity of the characters, whose speeches often seem
somewhat elevated and self-conscious. From the perspective
of the centuries, dignity may seem a bit incongruous for
such puny and even comic figures, but within each story,
some characters manage to stand out, as if to decree their
own significance on a purely human scale of values.
The mixture of comedy and weightiness which pene
trates so much of the book is visible also on the symbolic
level. The allegorical identification of Miller's three
eras with eras in Western civilization suggests a certain
solidity which we associate with historic grandeur. The
allegory also impresses upon us the idea that these are
representative men and times about which we are reading.
But the disparity between Miller's relatively simple men
and the inflated figures of history, and between his rela
tively uneventful narratives and the supposedly grand
movements of history is essentially comic, a sympathetic
but knowing commentary on the difference between aspirations
and achievements.
Similarly, the allusiveness of their names suggests
an additional dimension to some of Miller's characters, at
the same time that it suggests a reassessment of the refer
ence figure's image. Brother Francis is gentle, obedient,
and devout, but unlike Saint Francis of Assisi he founds no
order, receives no stigmata (unless we so regard the arrow
through the skull from which he dies), and seems an
extremely simple man, almost a simpleton. Dom Paulo is no
great theoretician or organizer, as was Saint Paul, yet he
may be said to have given new direction to the Church, or
at least the Abbey, by encouraging active relations with
secular scholars. Brother Joshua is clearly to be identi
fied with the Old Testament Joshua, who led his people into
a promised land, as well as with Christ, whose Hebrew name
is also Joshua. His struggle with himself in the Abbey's
garden over whether to accept the role thrust on him recalls
Jesus' night in the Garden of Gethsemane, but his relation
ship with Dom Jethrath parallels that of Joshua to Moses,
whose father-in-law's name (Jethro) is similar to the
Abbot's. With Mrs. Grales-Rachel, the symbolism of the
names essentially serves to deepen the mystery about her,
combining the mystical significance of the Holy Grail with
that of the Immaculate Conception. The name of the second,
and more beloved wife of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob,
in order to marry whom he labored a second seven years for
the bride-price, may suggest that man (or perhaps the
Church, the "bride" of Christ) will be more beloved of God
after this second "resurrection"; a secondary allusion could
275
be intended to the ship that rescues Ishmael in Moby-Dick,
"the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search
2 ^
after her missing children, only found another orphan."
In the case of certain other names, the allusions
seem to be exploited more for puns or rather localized and
humorous symbolism. Marcus Apollo and Brother Claret,
whose names suggest sophistication, even voluptuousness,
are emissaries from the Church to the neo-Renaissance court
of Hannegan II. The name of the postulant for Beatus
Leibowitz, Aguerra, connoting war, is hardly less intimidat
ing than that of the devil's advocate, Flaught, with its
connotation of flogging. Brother Fingo, who sculpts the
wooden statue of Leibowitz, bears a name which means in
Latin, "to make or form," and old Brother Horner, the master
copyist under whom Francis serves, vaguely suggests the old
nursery rhyme figure, Little Jack Horner, in that the monk
may be thought to "sit in a corner" where he does his work,
and that he "pulls out a plum" in getting Francis as an
apprentice. Cors, suggesting "body" and "corpse," is the
name of a doctor who abhors pain (that which the body finds
evil) prescribes euthanasia, and faces the "wrath" of the
Abbot Jethrath Zerchi. A rather elaborate pun on the
figures of Cain and Abel seems intended by the contrast in
Part Two between Brother Armbruster, whose name means
^Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Signet Classic
edition, New York, Toronto, and London, 1961), p. 536.
276
"crossbow" and suggests "hunter" (Abel was a hunter), and
Brother Kornhoer, whose name suggests "farmer" (Cain was a
farmer) and whose activities are branded as desecrations by
the librarian (his spiritual "brother"). And an excellent
play on words is implicit in the name of the town near the
Abbey, Sanly Bowitts, a justifiable linguistic corruption
of Saint or San Leibowitz.
The structural design of the book has an almost
geometric simplicity. Historical movements are treated as
direct progressions, such as could be plotted on a graph,
if history could be resolved into a science; seeing this
pseudo-history fulfill its implications creates the same
essentially "aesthetic" effect as observing a successful
experiment demonstrate the validity of its hypothesis. The
linear progressions, the cycles, and the repetitions with
variations by means of which this pseudo-history advances
are too smoothly continuous to correspond to actual history,
except where it is treated in a highly abstract and com
pressed manner, and indeed they relate quite closely to the
progressions, cycles, and repetitions of formal fictional
elements, which are clearly aesthetic devices. The frame
work, too, the three , r horizontal" patterns, the four
"representative" philosophical viewpoints explicitly raised
in Part Two but implicit throughout, and the surrounding
frame of the narrator's Olympian perspective, has a highly
abstract and even geometric quality to it. The four
277
"philosophies," represented by individual characters and
presented in debate, while they are indicative of man's
variety, are only a highly abstracted selection of human
predilections, and they achieve a balance with respect to
each other that would be hard to duplicate outside of an
artistic framework. Geometry, like extrapolation in
general, can only supply the outlines; artistry, feeling,
and thought are evident in the shading between the lines,
the people and their problems, the style and the wit, as we
have observed.
Through everything, of course, as in the Poet's
book, runs a kind of laughter, although it is not the same
bitter, sardonic laughter as that which the Poet displays
in Part Two, and which presumably causes Abbot Zerchi to
dismiss the book of verse as little more than satire. Irony
is a major tool of both writers, but the Poet's irony is
more limited, more personal, more intent on destructive
criticism, and related to a sense of outrage that the world
should be as it is. The irony of Miller's narrator is to a
great extent the irony of vast perspective, against which
personal outrage would be rather out of place. Miller's
humor involves more than irony, however; his style is witty,
his characters are sympathetically treated for all their
bumbling, and his approach is intellectual rather than
sentimental. His people have little to be thankful for or
to look forward to, but they find joy in simple tasks and
278
meaning in greater ones, and. they delight as much in contem
plation as they do in playfulness. The author too appears
to delight in little things, in puns and comic allusions, in
episodes of slapstick, in dramatic effects of confrontation,
discovery, and anticlimax.
Humor of any kind is relatively rare in science
fiction, with the exception of what James Blish terms "the
painful traveling-salesmari banter which passes back and
27
forth over real drawing-boards and spec sheets." Perhaps
because the scientist-author or the scientist-hero sees the
world rigidly in terms of weights and measures and lines of
force, perhaps because he is so busy seeking immediate
solutions to mundane problems that he can't see himself from
the perspective of anyone else, an even rarer occasion in
science fiction is the evocation of the "comic spirit.
All the more to be appreciated, then, is the achievement of
Walter M. Miller, Jr., for, in A Canticle for Leibowitz, he
27
Blish (above, note 14), pp. 64-65. See also:
L. Sprague de Camp, "Humor in Science Fiction," in Of Worlds
Beyond: The Science of Science-Fiction Writing, ed. Lloyd
Arthur Eschbach (Reading, Pennsylvania, 1957; reprinted
Chicago, 1964), pp. 69-76; Martin Gardner, "Humorous Science
Fiction," Writer, May, 1949, pp. 148-151.
28
The book is, of course, "serious" or "high" comedy
for the most part, although there are also pratfalls and
slapstick, and throughout, there is the sense of "comic"
perspective. See the essays by George Meredith, Henri
Bergson, and Wylie Sypher in Comedy, ed. Wylie Sypher
(Garden City, 1956). See also the discussions of "comedy,"
"irony," and "ironic comedy" in Northrop Frye, Anatomy of
Criticism (Princeton, 1957), especially pp. 43-49, 17/-181,
ir^rwr
279
has written a genuine comic novel. In doing so, however,
he has not written a work of "pure" science fiction; rather,
he has incorporated into his novel much of what is valuable
in science fiction and discarded much that is worthless for
his purposes. In other words, it would be more accurate to
say about A Canticle for Leibowitz that it uses science
fiction than to say that it i_s science fiction.
CHAPTER VII
ALGIS BUDRYS: ROGUE MOON (1960)
Author of well over one hundred stories and longer
works of science fiction since his first was published in
1952, Algis Budrys has also published other kinds of commer
cial fiction, and has, in addition, worked for several years
in the production and marketing areas of publishing.^" Thus
it is not surprising that in his recent book review columns
for Galaxy he has emphasized the following facts: books are
products for sale, publishing is a business, rates of pay
are low, and writers need to be prolific and aware of the
2
market in order to make a living. Making due allowance for
these conditions, however, Budrys has not accepted them as
excuses for inadequacy. And, although he has admitted the
impossibility of ever discovering absolute, objective
See MIT Index and supplements (above, Chapter I,
note 35) for bibliographical data. Some biographical data
are available in Contemporary Authors, II (1963), and pass
ing mention of some is made in Damon Rnight, In Search of
Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction, rev. ed.
(Chicago, 1967), pp. 199-203.
2
Algis Budrys, "Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy, every
issue since February, 1965 (bimonthly to June, 1968, monthly
since then). See especially February, 1966, pp. 131-133.
280
281
criteria for quality in literature, Budrys has nevertheless
maintained certain definite standards for the books he
reviews. Giving credit to Damon Knight and to James Blish
for the positive results of their essentially "destructive"
criticism, Budrys has attempted, rather successfully, to
3
continue in their tradition.
Aware of the necessity for the writer of commercial
fiction to create a "pocket universe" (in the words of
Murray Leinster) in which the world is or gives promise of
becoming comprehensible, Budrys demands that it be created
with style, intelligence, and a feeling for both life and
structure.^- Not the least necessary of the parts, "good
prose," he sees as an element which limits the author's
audience and tends to become itself an object of worship by
overly "literary" writers, yet he expects it and differen
tiates between those who can and cannot write "as writing
is understood by three main types of literary specialists--
teachers of composition, literary critics and the other
working professional writers who provide the day-in, day-out
reading matter for the fiction audience. On the other
hand, in science fiction, he is aware of the necessary
factors which distinguish it from other kinds of writing:
^On Blish, see Galaxy, June, 1965, pp. 168-169; on
Knight, see Galaxy, December, 1967, pp. 187-189.
^On the "pocket universe," see Galaxy, June, 1966,
pp. 141-142.
Galaxy, August, 1965, p. 186.
282
"ingenuity"; "hard thought about a thing"; and the need,
prior to writing, "to have created and resolved a specula
tive situation in his head."^ In addition, there are the
major qualities he can praise in a rather mediocre novel:
"there is the melding of actual science with an author's
counter-hypothesis that amplifies and romanticizes it, and
there is the reader's growT ing sense of grasping something
grand.Most of all, however, Budrys requests that a
writer of science fiction be a "storyteller," a term which
he defines at length:
A storyteller is someone with the gift of involving
his audience closely in an adventure with a begin
ning, middle and clear-cut ending which logically
and satisfactorily fulfills the promise of the
preceding parts. To be a storyteller, a writer must
be able to not only pose a real-sounding problem
involving people or things worth saving, he must
also be able to solve it or show that there is no
solution for very good reasons.
By the rules played in these pages, neatness
counts. The writer is not allowed to bring in moral
judgments, what "everyone knows" about the condition
of the world or dogma of any sort. His characters
may of course believe in these things, or they would
not seem like people; but no individual who sets out
to create a pocket universe is allowed the luxury of
evading his responsibility behind a bunch of mere
words, no matter how skillfully spoken or how
comforting their message. He is very definitely, as
you can see, allowed to solve problems, and it is by
this trait that he is most readily distinguishable
from some of his cousins in the Word game.®
^Galaxy, October, 1968, p. 170.
^Galaxy, February, 1965, p. 159.
^Galaxy, August, 1966, pp. 190-191.
283
And, by his own criteria, Budrys sees a definite reflection
of progress or improvement in science fiction from its
9
earliest days as a commercial publishing field. Even
measured against the whole of science fiction, not just
relative to any single year, he singles out for special
praise new writers--Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, Brian
Aldiss, J. G. Ballard--because they are more in touch with
the real world, and in love with words but not to the
exclusion of story and intelligence, although he gives
credit to their predecessors, too (most notably Philip K.
Dick, Walter Miller, and Fritz Leiber).^ Delany
especially, Budry claims, "operates on a plane which Robert
Heinlein never dreamed of, nor John W. Campbell, Jr., nor--
take a deep breath--Ted Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury or anyone
else we could have put forward as being a poet a mere five
or six years ago.
Budrys' judgments may or may not be vindicated,
eventually, but they are certainly of value in dealing with
the man's own writings. Although they follow by at least
thirteen years his first published fiction, they can't be
too far from the opinions he had in the 1950s when his
stories were frequently rated poorly in the monthly reader
poll conducted by Astounding, to some extent perhaps because
Q
Galaxy, October, 1966, p. 158.
^ Galaxy, October, 1967, pp. 192-194.
•^Galaxy, October, 1967, p. 193.
284
12
they were too literary.
Besides over a hundred stories (some of them pub
lished under the pseudonyms Ivan Janiver, Paul Janvier,
William Scarff, John A. Sentry, and Albert Stroud), Algis
Budrys has written at least seven science fiction novels
13
which have seen magazine and paperback publication. In
each case, he has attempted to center his science and
fiction on some human problem, frequently posed in psycho
logical or sociological terms and handled somewhat melodra
matically. Some Will Not Die (1961; published in part 1953
and 1954) sets up a dialectical opposition between absolute
individualism and social restraint or cooperation on an
earth devastated by plague. Man of Earth (1958; revised
from a 1956 magazine version) concerns the process of
psychological change in a man given a new, stronger body,
1 ?
“Of twenty-eight stories published in Astounding/
Analog from November, 1952, to September, 1959, only two
were ever ranked as high as second-best by readers’ votes:
"Citadel," February, 1955, the vote tabulation being given
in "The Analytical Laboratory," June, 1955, p. 103; "The
Executioner." January, 1956, reported on in The Analytical
Laboratory, April, 1956, p. 144. A large number of Budrys'
stories finished last, and one possible reason is that they
tended to deal with personal and emotional ramifications of
individual, already established science fictions. "The
Analytical Laboratory," appearing as close to monthly as
publication space permits, is compiled by the editor, John
W. Campbell, Jr.; winners of first and second places each
month receive bonus payments, a policy first announced in
the April, 1953, issue, p. 147.
13
Stories listed under these names in the MIT Index
(above, Chapter I, note 35) also appear in collections of
Budrys’ stories: The Unexpected Dimension (New York, 1960);
Budrys’ Inferno (New York, 1963).
285
set against a melodramatic plot in a background of war and
space exploration. Who? (1958) takes a scientist "repaired"
with metal parts and probably brainwashed by the Soviets,
and makes of him a symbol of loss of identity, in a kind of
satirical tirade against the Cold War. The Falling Torch
(1962; published in part 1958 and 1959) seems to be an
allegory of Budrys1 own dream-wish of going back to rescue
his native Lithuania, disguised as Earth conquered by the
"invaders." His latest, The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn
(1967; Budrys prefers the title, The Iron Thorn, given the
1966-67 magazine serial), is about "growing up" and losing
contact with one's past training and prejudices except as
reminiscences, but the story seems a confused melange of
adventure, rites of passage, accidental heroism on one world
(apparently Mars, settled and then forgotten), and dystopian
disappointment on another (Earth, somewhat as Wells imagined
it in The Time Machine) .
His most complex and ambitious novel, generally
regarded as his best, is Rogue Moon (1960), a book about a
"hero" and a "scientist" who conquer an alien artifact on
the moon, with the help of a machine which itself subtly
destroys the conquerors. Published in paperback only, it
was highly praised in the few places where it was
reviewed.^ Analog's P. Schuyler Miller called it "one of
shorter version of the novel also appeared,
just before the book publication: Algis Budrys, "Rogue
Moon," F&SF, December, 1960, pp. 5-38, 78-125.
286
the best science-fiction novels of 1961, [sic] and a sign
post to where the field may be going," and referred back to
it in 1968 as "unforgettable."^ Galaxy1s Floyd C. Gale,
brusque with paperbacks, summed up Rogue Moon in five words :
"Spectacular invention, plot and characterization."^^ F&SF,
which had published the magazine version, gave the book two
reviews. Critic-in-residence Alfred Bester wrote that "Mr.
Budrys has come very close to realizing our ideal of science
fiction, the story of how human beings may be affected by
17
the science of the future." Guest reviewer James Blish
was quite thorough and technical in his appreciation, offer
ing numerous insights and complimenting Budrys for his
ability to learn and grow in his writing as well as for
"writing a work which epitomizes everything he has ever had
1 8
to offer us." Five years after publication, the novel
was given notice by Kingsley Amis, in a survey of recent
science fiction for Holiday. Amid praise for Ballard,
Miller, Frederik. Pohl and Poul Anderson, Amis commends
Budrys for being able "to move between different levels,"
■^Review by P. Schuyler Miller, Analog, June, 1961,
p. 164. See also Miller's review of The Amsirs and the
Iron Thorn, Analog, October, 1968, pp” 164-165.
■^Review by Floyd C. Gale, Galaxy, February, 1962,
p. 194.
■^Review by Alfred Bester, F&SF, June, 1961,
pp. 104-105.
■^Review by James Blish, F&SF, June, 1961,
pp. 105-109.
287
specifically referring to the book's three themes: adven
ture and exploration, the nature of courage, and the
19
relationship of death and human identity. For the most
part, however, the novel was ignored outside the science
fiction media, a situation predictable because of the low
esteem in which science fiction as such is held by the
literary public but a situation unfortunate since this is
an honest attempt at writing a novel specifically science-
fictional in form, and an attempt which largely succeeds,
on its own terms.
Rogue Moon is a novel of about 55,000 words, divided
into nine chapters, alternately long and short, the long
20
ones being still further subdivided. These breaks are
fairly important, since it is partly through juxtaposition,
parallels, and contrasts that Budrys attempts to integrate
three separate stories, and to give different meanings to a
scientific effort at overcoming death.
The central plot concerns an attempt by the Navy in
1959 to explore, on the dark side of the moon, a mysterious
structure in which several men have lost their lives. In
the absence of spaceships sophisticated enough for a major
supply maneuver, they have taken advantage of a machine,
19
Kingsley Amis, "Science Fiction: A Practical
Nightmare," Holiday, February, 1965, p. 15.
20
Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon (Greenwich, Connecticut,
1960). All page references in text refer to this paperback
edition.
288
not yet perfected, which can duplicate and transmit elec
tronically even men and complicated machinery. By means of
an apparent telepathic contact between the human duplicates
here and on the moon, Dr. Edward Hawks, the machine's inven
tor, hopes to make it possible for the "twin" on earth to
retain memories of his alternate's exploration of the
structure before the latter's death. Once a man has been
found who can stand to "die" again and again without going
mad, Hawks's technique works. The structure proves to be
explorable and sufficient descriptive detail is amassed that
subsequent exploration teams may be able to survive the
ordeal, but not the slightest understanding of the structure
is achieved.
Sharing the odd-numbered chapters with the main
story, the secondary plot revolves around Al Barker, the
compulsive daredevil who accomplishes this conquest of
death, and it is aimed at showing the kind of man who would
volunteer for, and survive repeated subjective death, and
what effect this experience might have on such a man. One
answer, or set of data, is offered by the man himself, whose
cocky self-appraisals and histrionic capabilities fail to
cover an increasingly fanatical preoccupation with the quest
and his success. Additional data emerge from Hawks's
contact with Barker's personal life, a tangle of love-hate
relationships fit for a "true romances" novelette. Barker,
his mistress, Claire Pack, and his pander, Vincent
289
Connington, have achieved a precarious balance in their
social relationship. By introducing the inscrutable Hawks
as a new factor, Connington upsets this balance, and Barker,
partly because of the physiological and psychological
effects of his new job, can neither restore the old, nor
achieve a new equilibrium. Eventually Connington takes
Claire away, resulting in Barker's transferring the focus
of his energies to Hawks and the project, and to some extent
in upon himself.
The third "plot" is a sentimental love-story involv
ing Hawks and Elizabeth Cummings, a girl he meets by chance,
who happens to like listening to him as much as he likes to
talk. Their romance, the beginning of which is Platonic
and the consummation of which lies beyond the confines of
the novel, exists primarily to show the kind of man Hawks
is, and why he is the kind of man who would send other men
to death or insanity in quest of a phantom. Disconnected
from the main narratives, since it is described only in the
even-numbered chapters, this sequence offers an equally
adolescent alternative to the devouring love of Barker and
Claire, and it also provides an idyllic perspective of more
or less normal human experience, against which to measure
the whole project and Hawks's involvement in it.
As the science fiction plot supplies the novel with
a center, without which the other stories would have no
justification for existence, so the science fictions of the
290
novel, both as surface realities and as symbolic constructs,
predominate over all other aspects. Plots and characters
are manipulated to achieve symbolic acts, poses, and con
frontations suggested by the basic conceptions of the
exploration and the two men who accomplish it. Style and
characterization seldom, however, rise above the minimal
cliches needed to propel the science fiction reader from
incident to loaded incident; the reader may be asked to
solve some intellectual puzzles, but he is rarely led to
respond emotionally to the persons engaged in the action,
including the featureless narrator. Where concessions are
made to aesthetic form and artistic sensibility, a mechan
ical design is intimated; the intricate structure, the
occasional snatches of style approaching poetry, the occa
sional references to art and the "whole man," suggest the
geometrical sketch or outline of an artwork that might
emerge from a mind totally trained in the sciences. Yet
the novel has a sense of coherence, and even a sort of
power, partly because of the bare bones of its construction,
partly because of the unemotional pseudo-intellectualism of
its scientist-hero, and partly because of the awe accorded
its central symbolic construct, the alien artifact on the
moon.
Each of the novel's three basic science fictions has
a long history in the field. The treatment of telepathy
has ranged from relatively realistic appraisals of its
291
limitations, assuming its existence, to utopian and dysto
pian explorations of its ultimate potential. Fantasies of
wish-fulfillment seem to have dominated, although practical
speculation has not been lacking, and the whole area of
e.s.p. has been overused perhaps in recent years. The
matter transmitter or duplicator, which in real life may,
like e.s.p., be simulated by illusionists and charlatans,
has also assumed the status of a reality in science fiction,
frequently functioning as the ultimate in transportation.
Its use and misuse, its functioning and malfunctioning have
been assumed as mere background, examined analytically, and
employed for various effects from melodrama to black humor.
The alien artifact found on the moon, the earth, or another
planet is another hoary convention, signifying at least the
existence at some time of an alien intelligence whose
remains Earthmen have finally come upon. Frequently the
device must be dealt with, because it is dangerous, or
perhaps because it is a challenge, even a test for man, but
occasionally it is regarded merely as a sign, or an object
for contemplation. In each case, Budrys seems to take
cognizance of the convention's history and connotations,
even as he deals with its surface reality within his story,
and exploits its symbolic possibilities on two levels, that
of the characters and that of the reader.
Least developed of the science fictional motifs is
the concept of identical minds in contact across the space
292
between the earth and the moon. An accidental side-effect
of the simultaneous recreation of a man in two separate
machines receiving the same electronic signals, this contact
bears little similarity to the usual dream-fantasy of e.s.p.
as a perfectible "talent." Indeed, Hawks maintains that the
word "telepathy" with its connotations of interpersonal
communication is inapplicable to this phenomenon: "To be
able to read a man's mind is to be able to he that man--to
be where he is, to live whatever he is living. Even in this
special case of ours, the two men could only, for one decay
ing moment, seem to be of one mind" (p. 94). To persuade us
of the possibility of this special case, Budrys reinforces
Hawks's skepticism about telepathy in general, by showing
what elaborate precautions are necessary, to deprive the man
on earth of any sensory experience of his own, in order to
extend the duration of his contact with his alter ego on the
moon. The most important evidence, however, is subjective,
the memories of the volunteers who have experienced this
contact. All of them except Barker have been driven mad,
apparently by the illusion of their own deaths, so that
Barker himself is the primary source for information about
this modified telepathy. And Barker's testimony in support
of this contact is unintentional: he seems unable to
believe that he is not the same man as the many "Barkers"
who die on the moon, so vivid and personal are the memories
of the telepathic union.
293
The device which makes this contact possible,
Hawks's matter transmitter, or more precisely matter dupli
cator, is the major piece of futuristic technological
hardware in the novel. Physically, its most imposing
feature is its size. It occupies "tens of thousands of
square feet" (p. 7) and rises three stories; since the
floors have been removed and replaced by catwalks and
galleries, the transmitter seems almost to be the entire
building. Apparently composed of many different kinds of
electronic equipment, it calls to mind similar laboratories
existing today for work with rockets, missiles, atomic
weapons, and the like, which, like Hawks's laboratory, also
share a quasi-military status. Its complexity, beyond that
of present-day computers, is called for by the need to store
information relating to every significant part of a human
being; such gigantic size is required because, in a contem
porary setting, the desired complexity could be attained
only, if at all, by means of adding more equipment, not by
shortcuts or miniaturization beyond that which is already
available. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of men, kept busy
tending the transmitter, are dwarfed by it, engulfed in it,
dependent on it; if Hawks, and his chief assistants, Sam
Latourette and Ted Gersten, are representative of these
workers, they hardly exist except in the service of the
machine.
294
The fact of the transmitter's functioning is
attested to by the experiences of those who have been sent
by it to the moon, for whom it is little more than a means
of transportation, the understanding of which is relatively
unimportant. The manner in which it functions is important,
however, for Budrys and for Hawks; Hawks's explanations to
Barker of the technological process involved makes clear as
well the symbolic meaning which that process has for Budrys.
"Banks of amplifiers" measure, record, and store the "infor
mation" necessary to reconstruct a man out of "a local
supply of atoms." At the time of "transmission," the sub
ject is disintegrated, and the "signals" that represent him
are sent to one or more "receivers," in each of which an
apparently identical individual is constructed to fit the
transmitted specifications. This individual will apparently
have all the characteristics, responses, and memories of the
original person on whom he is modeled, but if he doesn't, he
won't know, being the reproduction and not the original.
Each man who enters the transmitter undergoes death and
rebirth, but only that which the machine can perceive,
measure, and transmit will exist in the copy or copies.
A man can never know for sure that he is the same person he
was at some past time--his appearance, his actions, his
storehouse of memories all change with time and experience;
even the cells of which he is composed all die and are
replaced within a certain number of years--but in Hawks's
295
transmitter, the process is immeasurably speeded up. Thus
Budrys raises, but does not answer categorically, a number
of questions: what is it like to die, to know you have
died and been reborn, how much of a man can we change or
replace before we have a different man altogether, or some
thing that is not quite the same as a man?
Although the transmitter enables the Navy's lunar
project to succeed in the novel, that project is not the
sole, or even the most important purpose for which it was
intended. The transmitter enables human beings to get to
the lunar surface at a time when space travel is not
adequate, it enables the United States Navy to explore the
mysterious structure before the "enemy" can get to the
thing, and it makes it possible for the "explorer" himself
to describe his passage in detail despite the fact that he
has been "killed" while obtaining that information. The
transmitter could also be used for other purposes, however,
such as duplicating products at a much cheaper rate than
manufacturing can offer; on this particular project, how
ever, where a human being is being transmitted, the possi
bility of duplicating some of the transmitter's own
equipment is ruled out because it would increase the margin
of error. Neither transportation, exploration, nor manufac
ture, however, was apparently in Hawks's mind when he first
began work on his transmitter, nor are they of any great
importance to him now. His intention, he confides to
296
Elizabeth indirectly in Chapter Four, was to save lives;
speaking of an "X-ray camera," the films of which could be
brought to life with healthy tissue where a malignancy was,
he seems to be referring guardedly to his own top secret
work. The "test pattern" on the transmitter is the elec
tronic description of Sam Latourette, the friend with
terminal cancer whom he has to relieve as second in command
on the moon project, and whom he hopes to reconstruct some
day when the disease can be cured. Thus the moon project,
itself, can be seen from Hawks's standpoint as, in one
sense, a series of "experiments," testing the reliability
of the transmitter, so as to be sure that the "real" Sam
Latourette will be able to live again.
Ambiguous as the transmitter and its functions may
be, it is at least amenable to and comprehensible in terms
of human aims. The structure on the moon, the third major
science fictional configuration of the novel, is even more
ambiguous in that it and its function or functions cannot
be resolved adequately in human terms. Whereas the trans
mitter is analogous to other, more familiar laboratory
devices, the structure on the moon is analogous to other
things in human experience only in terms of what it does:
it kills people. It does not appear to be alive or to be
native to the moon; it may be a trap or a test for man; it
may be that its challenge is unintended, that it does not
regard in any way the humans who enter it, that "regard"
297
has nothing to do with its nature. It has a real existence,
covering a measurable amount of space in a definite loca
tion, and it kills people; anything else that is said about
it is subject to misinterpretation. Its physical appearance
inside and outside seems to differ with time and with the
observer: photographs of it are said to be unreliable; the
charts drawn up by the Navy technicians from the reports of
Barker can only pinpoint locations of dangers; the visual
description Budrys gives us of Hawks's passage through it,
following Barker on the final day, represents only Hawks's
impressions, which differ from Barker's. Its incomprehensi
bility is further suggested by the fact that the various
observers cannot even agree on a name for it; it is called
an artifact, a device, a living organism, a machine, a
formation, and a place, but no one can be quite sure that
any of these appellations is correct, since they all refer
to things in human experience.
By its very existence, and the fact that people die
inside it, apparently killed by it, the structure evokes
comparisons with other things man takes to be challenges.
James Blish sees it as an analogue of a battlefield in war,
on which, in order to "win," we must subject ourselves to a
"weapons technology" that kills us before the enemy does,
and more subtly, but he acknowledges that the book can also
21
be read as a fable pitting man against nature. Our space
^Blish (above, note 18), pp. 106-107.
298
program, too, is a struggle with nature, in which we use
armor, weapons, and strategy much as in war, and from which
the military hopes to gain still more knowledge and tech
nique; but the space program is more than an analogy, since
the laboratory procedures in the novel are conceived of as
part of the United States’ space program. The major differ
ence between the space program's goals and destinations in
life and those in the novel is that in the latter case all
the unknowns and enigmas which may face future astronauts
are concentrated in a single object which seems to cause the
two results man fears the most from his explorations into
the unknown: death and madness. Perhaps only a man who is
already mad, or who is in love with death or the fear of
death, can withstand such pressure, and for A1 Barker, who
apparently is such a man, the structure on the moon seems
to sum up his whole life of struggling, with mountains and
oceans, with machines and speed records, and with human
beings both en masse and individually, in sports, in love,
in every aspect of human life where competition can result
in a kind of victory. Hawks's observation that the thing
on the moon represents for Barker a "rite of passage" may
be partly correct, but if Barker has to prove himself even
to a machine, the machine must be regarded as internalized
in Barker, as the darker self in man which all men must try
to conquer. In the science fiction tradition from which
the structure on the moon descends, such an artifact is
299
normally presented as a more or less deliberate creation of
some alien race, left behind as a riddle, test, threat,
challenge, or trap by means of which to examine or prove the
worthiness of mankind. The thing with which Barker does
battle is obviously alien and seems to have been constructed
for a purpose, but the conventional aftermath of confronta
tion with the maker of the thing is lacking, as the novel
focuses mainly on the battle and its results for those
involved in it. Finally, the fact that all impressions of
the thing are different and inadequate suggests that really
nothing has been gained, objectively, from the entire
project, forcing the reader back even more into a confron
tation with the motivations that surround such an undertak
ing.
As in most of his writings, Budrys seems to be quite
concerned with human beings, but mainly with their percep
tions of and reactions toward the central science fictional
phenomena. Thus, although his characters may be more human
than those of many other science fiction writers, they are
still extremely limited in their psychology, being reduced
pretty much to the one dimension necessary for the action
of the science fiction story. This limitation in their
psychology is further accentuated by the manner in which
Budrys presents his characters' inner lives: either the
character himself, or a central raisonneur, generally states
explicitly, and explains, the causes, motivations, and
300
mental processes behind his acts, attitudes, and behavior in
general. Thus the reader is made aware that the author
knows something about psychology, and about his characters,
but not that he is capable of dramatizing his knowledge in
terms of fictional acts and situations, or that he is
capable of drawing characters who, like normal human beings,
are less conscious of and articulate about their own inner
workings. Whether the cause is the limitations on wordage
imposed by a publisher, a distrust in the reader's willing
ness to put up with less action and more characterization,
a failure to imagine the necessary behavior, or an inability
to surpass the usual level of pulp characterization, the
results are that the reader is lectured to rather than
shown, and that some characters appear to be walking ency
clopaedias .
In Rogue Moon, the raisonneur is Edward Hawks,
D.Sc., who is also one of the two heroes, and the central
figure in the narrative, as well. As Research Director for
"Continental Electronics," developer of the matter trans
mitter, and chief of the moon project, he has status, power,
and creative ability many a reader engaged in the sciences
might envy. Engaged in a single-minded pursuit for a way to
overcome death, he could be regarded as obsessed if not
actually a "mad scientist." Wishing to save lives, yet
forced by the logic of his position in charge of the project
to send men to death or insanity, he should be under a
301
severe strain. And, indeed, as Budrys portrays him, we see
a man who might be regarded as only "functionally" sane,
i.e. capable of doing his job as long as he does not ques
tion its worth. Hawks seems to be almost totally involved
in his work, so much so that he is unable to relate emotion
ally to others; he says he would like to "get to know" his
new assistant better, he closes off the friendship he appar
ently had with his old assistant, and he plays at hate with
Barker, but every move seems to be rationally planned, and
partly aimed at keeping himself and his research team
functioning smoothly. The intensity of his self-control is
relaxed only slightly when he is in the company of Elizabeth
Cummings, with whom he "falls in love" because she is will
ing to listen to him talk. Even with her, however, he
observes the rules of security and does not talk about his
work directly, rather about his background, his curiosity
about how things work, his fear of death, and his dreams of
overcoming death.
Three of these characteristics, his self-control,
his fascination with machines, and his fear of death, seem
sufficient to sum up Hawks's behavior in general and,
although they may not be enough to make a believably rounded
person of him, they are given fictional reality by being
embodied in actions. His self-control is most obvious in
his confrontations with Barker and his friends, with whom he
refuses to become emotionally involved; his rational
302
analysis of things, including his own and Barker's reac
tions, is characteristically delivered in lectures. In the
laboratory, where he is more sure of himself, speaking in
terms of the process by which he has damaged people, these
speeches are relatively objective and neutral; at Barker's
home, where Hawks must react without rehearsing his mate
rial, where he is dealing with the alien specialty of
psychology, and where he himself is involved as an actor,
not merely as an experimenter, his monologues seem more
pedantic, more driven, and more obviously tinged with a kind
of intellectual sneer. That he has a need for self-control
is indicated by the existence of the other two basic drives
in him, shown in his less guarded moments alone or with
Elizabeth, and less explicitly in other actions. His fasci
nation with machines is shown by his comfortability in
explaining things in terms of how they work, but also by his
apparent compulsion to stare at and touch the matter trans
mitter, even when he is in conversation with others. His
fear of death is seen in his memories of Rogan, driven mad
by telepathic contact with death at the beginning of the
book, in his following Barker through the lunar structure
when the breakthrough is imminent (to prove he is not a mere
procurer for his experiments, or for the death-machine on
the moon), and in symbolic acts by both Hawks L (on the
moon) and Hawks M (on earth) after the passage is effected
and the telepathic contact broken. The lunar copy faces the
303
fact that the other Hawks is still on earth, continuing to
lead the life that both remember, and lets himself die of
oxygen starvation. The other Hawks insists on being
released from his spacesuit first, in order to have the
psychological advantage of watching Barker, who led the way
throughout the adventure, emerge after him.
Hawks is not only an actor in the novel, however;
he is also a spectator, a self-conscious observer of every
thing that is narrated. Although the narrator seldom
penetrates Hawks's consciousness, he adheres strictly to
Hawks's point-of-view, even to the extent of describing the
interior of the structure on the moon only when Hawks passes
through it, resulting in the existence of two independent
versions of Hawks. The outcome is that Hawks is not only
the central unifying device for the events of the book, but
also a kind of filtering agent responsible for the way
things are seen and the manner in which they are described.
Thus Hawks's participation in them determines the existence
of the two sub-plots, balanced in their pull on him, and
Hawks's way of seeing and relating to the world (simplistic,
mechanistic, perhaps emotionally retarded) may be held at
least partly responsible for the close approximation of the
other characters and their actions to the banal stereotypes
of pulp fiction. In this way Budrys can almost turn a
liability into a triumph, his apparent inability to draw
believable characters becoming a means of characterizing
304
the observing consciousness as well as a way of expressing
artistic economy and restrictive discipline.
Thus a reason is apparent, if not fully satisfac
tory, for the extremely limited characterization given all
the other persons in the novel except Barker. Lacking back
ground or antecedents, they all seem suspended in mid-air,
important not in themselves but in how they affect or relate
to Barker or Hawks. Most of the people connected with Hawks
are purely business associates, practically machines for
getting certain jobs done; the Navy's zombies on the moon,
whose duplicates on earth are now living the lives they
remember, are the most explicit statement of this theme, but
the scientists in the laboratory are no more emotionally
alive, with the possible exception of Sam Latourette, who
gets removed from his job because of emotional involvement.
He idolizes Hawks, dislikes Barker, and is perhaps the only
man in the laboratory who could understand the unconscious
irony in Hawks's description of Ted Gersten, who is to take
over Latourette's position: "He's a hard man to understand.
He never shows more than he has to. It's very hard to
accommodate yourself to a man like that" (p. 68).
Elizabeth Cummings, Hawks's girl-friend, is a blood
less bundle of apparently compassionate cliches, an adoles
cent's dream of pure love uncomplicated by the realities of
physical, psychological, social, and economic existence;
their first meeting is not only impossibly coincidental, but
305
also obtrusively engineered to allow Hawks to play the role
of a hero rescuing a damsel in distress; their subsequent
encounters, neatly punctuating the novel's structure,
exhibit little reason for the apparent romantic involvement
which develops.
The characters connected with Barker are more inter
esting, perhaps, if not more pleasant. As Hawks dampens
emotions, Barker quickens them, attracting, almost demanding
what he calls "assassins" for his entourage. As a femme
fatale, Claire Pack is rather disappointing, seen by Hawks
as rather repulsively sexual, thin, long-legged, a compul
sive toucher of flesh (Hawks likes to touch machines, which
are clean), a woman whose eyes are "flat calm" when she is
flirting or trying to seduce, and whose breasts, used as
weapons, have no trace of femininity. Apparently attractive
to others, she is cast in the role of a vampire to Barker
(nibbling at him, raising a purple bruise on his neck) and
an alley cat to Vincent Connington (whom she despises, but
for whom she leaves Barker, after Barker shows he can fear
like any other man, and Connie shows his own abilities at
manipulating people). But to Hawks she is only a tramp, a
fallen woman whose attempts to seduce him (she tries simple
physical flirtation, challenging him to take her away from
Barker, commanding him to make love to her, and appealing to
his sympathy for someone lost and misunderstood) he fends
off with no apparent regrets.
306
Connington is the closest approximation to a villain
in this book, a pudgy, loud-mouthed braggart who drives a
big car, wears cowboy boots, smokes green cigars, and drinks
too much. Like Claire, he is a caricature, of the glad-
hand er, the public relations man as seen by his enemies, or
by those who have no use for professional or amateur public
relations. Jealous of Hawks and Barker, whom he sees as
"movers," he shows his ability to manipulate people by
bringing them together as, in his analogy, a chemist pre
pares a chemical reaction. Even when he drunkenly announces
to them his belief that Hawks and Barker will destroy each
other, neither is dissuaded from the coming partnership.
But he can only predict that some kind of fireworks will go
off, not how or what kind, and he has no control over his
experiment; he seems as surprised as anyone else when, as a
side reaction, Claire leaves Barker for him. A would-be
manipulator, he is pathetically easy to manipulate; like
Hawks, Barker, and Claire, he is a victim of his needs and
desires but, unlike them, he doesn't know what those needs
and desires are.
The only other character whose complexity, such as
it is, approaches that of Hawks is A1 Barker, the nominal
hero of the adventure if not of the novel. Although Barker,
too, is seen through the eyes of Hawks, he is seen in terms
of his relationships with adventure and death, and with
Claire and Connie, as well as in his continual confrontation
307
with Hawks. Representatively important as an adventurer and
an experimental object or guinea pig, he is also employed by
Budrys as a counterweight to the figure of Hawks in the
overall balanced pattern of the novel.
As an adventurer, Barker appears to be obsessed with
death and overcoming it physically by escaping from it
(whereas Hawks hopes to outwit death, or to overcome it
mechanically). He sees himself as a warrior (Mimbreno
Apache by birth, OSS assassin in World War II by experience,
Sir Lancelot by analogy in a mock-Arthurian dialogue with a
naval ensign preparing him for the matter transmitter) whose
time has passed (the Indian wars are over, Indians don't
fight distinctively in modern mechanized warfare, Sir
Lancelot is a myth). Besides providing a spectacle for
other men (mountain-climbing, skin-diving, auto-racing, and
boat-racing), Barker has competed successfully on other
levels (an Ivy League graduate, he boasts of being a "whole
man," affects an English accent, and has hobnobbed with the
rich). Yet everything he has fought to obtain (his woman,
his wealth, his reputation, his veneer of culture) he risks
daily, not merely against physical perils (symbolized by his
speeding around a hairpin curve on the ocean cliff near his
home) but also against psychologically dangerous human
beings (Claire and Connie, whom he considers "old, familiar
assassins").
308
For this man, the chance to die again and again is
a challenge to prove himself against death in a new and
different way, not merely to escape it but to experience it
and yet to continue to live. The compulsive need to prove
himself forces Barker to accept the job before he even knows
what it is, and requires him to continue in it, despite the
terror of it, when he is taunted with implicit charges of
cowardice by Hawks, a man whom Barker feels to be the real
coward, staying safely behind the lines while others do his
dirty work. This need to prove himself enables Barker to
retain his sanity, that is, to continue to function as a
tool for Hawks and the Navy to use in their exploration of
the moon formation, but the multiple experiences of death
do have an effect on him.
Between the sheer fatigue of the adventure, the
psychological jolt of death, the confrontation with his
"murderer," and the strain of maintaining security when he
wants to exult in his 'Victories," Barker seems to lose his
control over his everyday existence. This change is most
explicitly dramatized by the events of the night after his
first "death," which produce a new alignment in his rela
tions with Claire and Connie. Having perhaps matured a bit
as a result of his conquest of death and fear, Barker can
no longer view Connington as a mere source of amusement, an
object for psychological torture. Partly out of jealousy
for a rival heretofore rightly considered impotent, partly
309
out of fear of death and vindictiveness toward Hawks who has
exposed this fear, Barker has to prove himself once more,
this time by beating up the drunken Connington who has dared
to pass out on Claire's bed. Sensing Barker's panic, and
smarting under Hawks's rejection of her, Claire sides with
Connie, and Barker, unable to cope, banishes her for what
he calls "eating carrion." As the days and deaths pass on,
Barker, alone with only Hawks to hate (Claire and Connie
have left, smashing up Barker's house to punish him), aban
dons the cliffside house (symbol of his worldly accomplish
ments) and moves to the city, his life becoming more and
more exclusively bound up with the conquest of the thing on
the moon.
Another force at work on Barker, which may be what
ultimately tips the balance against him, is the matter
transmitter. Whatever subtle changes occur when he is
continually reconstructed according to the machine's elec
tronic memory, he could not know, even if he were able to
admit to himself that he is not the same man after each
transmission. Since the pattern in the memory banks is
supposed to be constant, such changes should be random and
slight. The example suggested in the novel is the memory
of the color of his first schoolbook; he insists that it was
"orange, with blue printing," but since he never said this
before transmission, no one can know if it is true. In
fact, his insistence on one particular story and
310
illustration in the book seems as much an act of faith as of
memory. The three goldfish, leaping out of their bowl onto
a bookcase, then back again, are analogues for Barker him
self, one of nature's experiments like the first sea-
creature that learned to live on land (p. 98). The changes
after the first one could be cumulatively regressive,
however, reproducing a Barker closer to the one originally
scanned than is the Barker just wheeled into the transmit
ter, whose newer memories were not in the original pattern.
This could explain, in part, Barker's problems in coping
with his social environment at the same time that his work
within the formation and his understanding of himself are
improving. The culmination of this development is seen in
the last chapter, where the Barker on the moon is forced to
choose between two actions, either of which denies him
survival. Useless to those who live on the moon, he must
either choose death, as Hawks does, or take a chance on
being scrambled by the moon's inadequate transmitter if he
chooses to compete with the Barker already reconstructed on
earth. Budrys, understandably, does not tell the reader
which of the choices Barker makes.
By implication, of course, Budrys is showing the
reader how a man is inevitably changed in his struggles, by
his enemy, by himself, by the tools he employs to confront
his adversary. And Hawks, like Barker, is also a repre
sentative man, also changed by the tools and methods he
311
employs, however much the two may appear to differ in their
basic outlooks on life.
Barker, who has tried to see and do everything worth
doing, who has money and contacts and an Ivy League educa
tion, considers himself truly cultured: "'Would you care to
discuss art with me, Doctor? Western or Oriental. Or
music? Pick your slice of civilized culture. I know 'em
all. I'm a whole man, Hawks--' Barker got clumsily up to
his feet. 'A better man than anybody else I know'" (p. 28).
In this passage and elsewhere, however, both Barker and
Budrys seem intent on disproving the assertion that Barker
is "a whole man." Physically, he is missing a leg and wears
a wooden one in place of it. Psychologically, he is lacking
awareness of the actual existence of other people except as
they please or anger him. As a "whole man," culturally,
Barker glibly spouts literary allusions (a trite one from
Byron, an irrelevant one from Chaucer, an imaginary one from
a pseudo-Arthurian drama), but seems unaware of his own
parallels in literature (his wooden leg recalls Captain
Ahab, his Friday crucifixion Jesus Christ, and through them
the archetypes of defiant and reborn heroes and gods). His
veneer of culture is in conflict with his claim to be a
warrior, and both are romantic poses, but defensive, almost
paranoiac violence, physical and verbal, does seem more
characteristic of him than the admiration of the fine arts,
knowledge about which he seems to possess largely as he
312
would a weapon. Even what he does have he continually
sacrifices in the experiment, to be born again of different
atoms and perhaps different memories, making his claim to
"wholeness" even more hollow by his failure to recognize
what is happening to him.
Hawks does not claim to be cultured, although he
does reply to Barker's taunts one time by replying, "I've
also read a book" (p. 47). Physically whole, he is as
psychologically limited as Barker, able to get people to do
what he wants not so much by threats or force of personality
as by virtue of his superior knowledge which others trust as
they might that of a magician. Barker, in fact, indirectly
calls him a magician, Merlin, whose role to Lancelot in the
imaginary playlet is that of an armorer to a knight. As a
scientist or technician, Hawks is indeed an armorer, unable
himself to go off into the battle until it has already been
won. Where Barker deals with things in terms of glory,
Hawks considers jobs to be done; whereas Barker sees those
beneath him as animals, Hawks sees those under him as cogs
in a machine; if Barker can summon up quotations from great
literature, Hawks can summon up allusions to scientific
inventions and discoveries.
Within his own area, Hawks is more "whole" than
Barker, more capable than anyone else in the novel in fact
in terms of predicting and controlling the phenomena with
which he comes in contact. As a theoretical scientist, and
313
as a technician on a specific project, he finds it extremely
useful to assume that events can be interpreted in terms of
empiricism, relativism, and determinism. The mere existence
of the matter transmitter would seem to indicate that the
theory is correct that man is nothing more than his measur
able parts. Despite the subjectivity of each man's experi
ence within the lunar formation, it, too, can be measured
and explored as_ if_ it were what the measurements declare it
to be, regardless of what it really is. Any body will
trigger the reactions of the lunar formation, and it was
thought that any man could learn to find his way around in
there. If it takes a special kind of man to survive the
shock of apparent death, this does not invalidate relativism
as much as it suggests that most men take subjective experi
ence too seriously. Dealing with something like the struc
ture on the moon (and perhaps all of nature is like that),
one has to follow the same rules that it does, to be aware
that if he does this, it will do that (and kill him, in all
probability). In order to gain control over nature, in any
of its aspects, a scientist has to be willing to forego his
desires and mere subjective impressions, to observe care
fully what actually happens in order to predict what may
happen next. And in order to defeat the thing on the moon,
Barker has to give up the idea that the wishes of a strong
man will be respected for themselves, and to learn the
methods and attitudes of science, which Hawks has long been
314
familiar with, and which he uses to make Barker a part of
his attack on the lunar formation.
To be sure, the scientific viewpoint is also lim
ited; useful though it is in some cases, it is perhaps less
effective in terms of people, and in terms of subjective
phenomena than is a species of romanticism, such as that of
Barker. If charisma does not work on nature, it does tend
to impress people, and both Barker and Hawks employ it in
their relations with others. Hawks, too, is aware of
subjective areas of his experience which are important to
him, and which he definitely does not want to lose, however
unscientific such an attachment may be.
Oddly enough, it is Connington, rather early in the
book, who makes explicit the thesis that neither way of
seeing things is adequate:
"A technician--like you, Hawks--sees the whole world
as cause an' effect. And the world's consistent,
explained that way, so why look any further? Man
like you, Barker, sees the world moved by deeds of
strong men. And your way of lookin' at it works out,
too.
"But the world's big. Complicated. Part-answer
can look like the whole answer and act like the whole
answer for a long time. For instance, Hawks can
think of himself as manipulating causes an' producing
effects he wants. 'N you, Barker, you can think of
Hawks and you as s'perior, Overman types. Hawks can
think of you as specified factor t' be inserted in
new environment, so Hawks can solve new 'vironment.
You can think of yourself as indomitable figure
slugging it out with th' unknown. And so it goes,
roun and roun', an' who's right? Both of you?
Maybe. Maybe. But can you stan' to be on the same
job together?" (p. 29)
315
Drunken, and inflated with his apparent success,
Connington sees himself as the prime mover, and seems to
interpret the world in a third way, in terms of the rela
tionships between people. In his inept mastery, in his role
as a would-be god gifted with neither omniscience nor omni
potence, Connington seems calculated to provide an ironic
commentary on his own creator; Budrys also seems to bring
his characters together in hopes of confrontation and
conflict, and then to let them work things out themselves.
But Connington is also important in that he does act as a
spokesman for this third ingredient in story-telling.
Besides having an active hero and a scientific raisonneur,
a science fiction novel can also use some measure of
dramatic conflict.
Nevertheless, Hawks is the most obvious spokesman
for Budrys throughout the novel. If Hawks is satirized, in
terms of his obsessions and his one-sidedness, so are the
other characters in the book. If he is, as James Blish
suggests, "demonstrably, clinically, incurably insane," so
are the others and, as Blish continues, so are we, so is
22
contemporary Western civilized man. For Hawks's insanity
is at least partly that of a specialized sort of intelli
gence which our civilization has encouraged the growth and
refinement of for centuries. Functionally, and within his
^Blish (above, note 18), p. 107.
316
discipline, Hawks is taken to be a genius; even outside his
specialty, he seems to stand for awareness. He is the most
aware of forces manipulating him as well as of the reverse.
His is the novel's central experiencing consciousness. And
it is Hawks who makes the speech which most nearly counter
balances the ultimate futility of the project itself.
Trying, almost incoherently, to declare himself to Elizabeth
the night before he, too, goes through the matter transmit
ter, Hawks hits on, among other things, the subject of
entropy, or the tendency of all of the energy in the
universe to run downhill:
"The thing is, the universe is dying! . . . Only one
thing in the entire universe grows fuller, and richer,
and forces its way uphill. Intelligence--human
lives--we're the only things there are that don't
obey the universal law. The universe kills our bodies ;
. . . And in that way, in the end, it kills our brains.
"But our minds . . . [sic] There's the precious
thing; there's the phenomenon that has nothing to do
with time and space except to use them--to describe
to itself the lives our bodies live in the physical
Universe." (pp. 153-154)
Thus Budrys appears to be saying that the scientific world
view is the best we've achieved so far, that insanity may be
just another name for intelligence, and that intelligence
may be no more than a basic drive which we can hardly
resist, but that the glory of man is that he pursues intel
ligence voluntarily, as much because he can as because he
must.
Insofar as Budrys was trying to create an artwork,
not just to make a symbolic comment on the noble insanity
317
of man as exhibited in institutionalized science, the whole
does not seem to be fully integrated. The structure of the
novel has a kind of geometric balance, and the patterns
apparent have some aesthetic justification, but there is
not enough density or weight, in terms of characterization
and superficial realistic detail, to make the patterns come
to life. The style, with all due allowances for Hawks’s
cultural inadequacies as narrator-surrogate, seldom achieves
a level consonant with the significance imposed on things
and people in the novel. And, largely because of the inade
quacy of structure and style, the symbolic shadows of both
the characters and the science fictions seem far greater
than the objects that are supposed to cast those shadows.
The structure of the novel is extraordinarily com
plex, especially considering its length (A Canticle for
Leibowitz is hardly this involved, and it is twice as long
as Rogue Moon). In about 55,000 words, Budrys attempts to
balance the three viewpoints just discussed, two distinct
groupings of characters, three plots, and a number of
different settings. In nine chapters, he continuously
alternates and juxtaposes parallel and antithetical events,
persons, and locales, widening his canvas far beyond the
confines of the laboratory at the center, suggesting by
implication certain comments on the subjectivity of place
and time. Repetition with variation is employed in a number
of ways, the most significant of which is probably the
318
symbolic recapitulation of the action in the passage of
Barker and Hawks through the mysterious formation on the
moon.
The relations between the two groups of characters
can almost be diagrammed like a chemical reaction. At first
we find three groups, Elizabeth alone, Barker and his satel
lites, and the complex arrangement around Hawks, including
his personal relationship with Latourette, his contacts with
the Navy over the head of his nominal boss, his employer,
and the sense of direct responsibility toward him felt by
his staff. With the coming of Barker, the two complex
groups become connected at two points: Hawks gets swept up
somewhat in the Barker-Connington-Pack love triangle, and
Hawks’s staff gets involved, negatively as far as emotions
are concerned, with Barker. Balancing this top-heavy,
unstable arrangement is Hawks’s private relationship with
Elizabeth, still very tentative. The first casualty of the
reaction is Sam Latourette, replaced by Ted Gersten, who is
not as concerned for Hawks or himself, nor as excitable by
Barker. The next spin-off finds Claire and Connie deserting
Barker and Hawks, while Hawks's bond with Elizabeth grows
stronger. With the conquest of the lunar formation,
Barker's usefulness is gone, and the complex of relations
within the company will begin to dissolve, since it existed
only for the duration of the project. Strongest of all now
is the attachment between Hawks and Elizabeth. This diagram
319
is complicated still more, of course, by the fact that
"Barker" is really Barker, Barker^, Barke^, Barker^, etc.,
and that Hawks becomes Hawks^ with the final moon shot.
Of the three plots, one is kept almost entirely
distinct from the other two. The love-story of Hawks and
Elizabeth Cummings is handled mainly in the even chapters,
with only occasional brief allusions to it being made
elsewhere. Besides being convenient interludes between
important blocks of action in the main part of the book,
these chapters chart the growth of a romance which begins
with an accidental meeting on the road and climaxes with a
declaration of love on a seaside promontory. The time
intervening between these two events is spent almost
entirely in talk, during which Elizabeth (and the reader)
gets to know Hawks a little better, and the couple's
progressive interest in each other is barely suggested.
The other chapters seem to represent a five-act
drama in which the dominance shifts from Barker's love-life
to the conquest of the lunar structure (simultaneous with
the growth of Hawks's romance). Chapter I introduces the
characters and sets the scene. Chapter III contains an
exposition of the novel's science fictions and the beginning
of the central action. Chapter V presents the first shot
and its aftermath, climactic events in both the exploration
plot and the Barker "love"-plot. Chapter VII features
rising action for the moon exploration and denouements for
320
Barker's love-life and Sam Latourettefs life as a whole.
Chapter IX features the final climax and anticlimax of the
major plot, the minor plot having ceased to exist.
Each chapter is a discrete unit within the structure
of the novel, in terms of time as well as of action. Each
even-numbered chapter occupies a single evening between the
events of the surrounding chapters. Four of the five odd-
numbered chapters cover events taking place in a single day.
Chapter VII, however, although it also functions structur
ally as a single day, has seven sections strung out over a
considerable length of time. Unlike the sections in the
other daytime chapters, they are not identified by cardinal
numbers; instead, they are set apart by "time-signatures,"
ranging from 4:38 to 9:30, indicating the number of minutes
Barker has so far managed to survive within the lunar
structure. A number of days may pass between any two
sections, setting up a third time-scale for the chapter, but
the number is usually unspecified, and Barker's time-scale
is apparently the one to which everyone connected with the
project is most closely tied.
Each section within a chapter is also a complete
unit, with its own beginning, climax, and ending, other
standard features as well: a confrontation between two
characters; a setting different from those in surrounding
sections; a single significant image, sometimes enforcing a
distinct philosophical point. Some of these dramatic
321
vignettes are quite effective. Chapter I, section i, for
example, sets the scene in the laboratory, shows the volun
teer, Rogan, driven mad, and reveals the need for a man in
love with death. Chapter III, section ii presents the
mock-Arthuriad and Chapter IX, section iii is the trip
through the lunar formation. The last two sections are
both conclusions for Hawks and both are handled for
startling, if sentimental effects. In IX, v, he reminds
Barker that they are both duplicates and he clings to his
resolve to die, by letting his oxygen run out:
Hawks clambered over the rocks until he began to pant.
Then he stood, wedged in place. He turned his face
up, and stars glinted on the glass. He took one
shallow breath after another, more and more quickly.
His eyes watered. Then he blinked sharply, viciously,
repeatedly. "No," he said. "No, I'm not going to
fall for that." He blinked again and again. I'm
not afraid of you," he said. "Someday I, or another
man, will hold you in his hand." (p. 174)
The "you" is apparently Death, but it is also the moon, the
earth, the death-machine, life in general, and Elizabeth.
In IX, vi, the ending is unambiguous. After emerging from
his suit, knowing he is not the same man, Hawks opens a note
held in his hand and reads the message he knows is there:
"Remember me to her" (p. 176). In Chapter VII, the sections
have other functions, too: via its characters, each section
there relates back to an earlier event in the book; via its
time-signature, each section relates ahead to the passage
through the lunar formation in Chapter IX.
The passage through the lunar structure, which we
322
experience with Hawks for the first time in Chapter IX, is
measured off by his watch, which he apparently looks at
whenever something in particular catches his eye. Some of
his visions relate only to the artifact, itself, but most
are related to sights of Barker's space-suited bodies. In
only one case is a time-signature exactly repeated: at
6:39 in the formation, Hawks and Barker have just passed a
spot littered with Barker's corpses; at 6:39 in Chapter VII,
Barker reports that Connington and Claire have just smashed
up his house, in leaving him, and he announces his plans to
move into the city. Thus it is suggested that Barker's
experiences on earth affected those on the moon, as well as
vice versa, and we are reminded then, as throughout the
passage, of the subjectivity of experience, of time, even of
life. At 9:19, and again a few seconds later, the passage
through the formation almost has a serious effect on Hawks's
earthly life, as Barker stops for a moment, looking
desperate. He acknowledges later that he almost didn't want
to leave, apparently because the job would then be over, but
possibly because he knew that he could stand it, while the
experience of death would punish Hawks, permanently.
Rogue Moon were merely a story of exploration, of
man's meeting the challenge of nature, much of this complex
ity would be superfluous. But the novel also seems intended
to be a portrait of a scientist, and as such, an essay on
the differences between scientists and other men. Although
323
Hawks is measured against others as well, he is contrasted
mainly with Barker, who, for the sake of artistic economy,
is drawn as differently from Hawks as possible. Thus the
need to contrast these two kinds of heroes, their outlooks,
and their life styles requires Budrys to present each one in
a more or less "natural" habitat, as well as in the enclosed
situation where they match themselves against the thing on
the moon, the machine which takes them there, and each
other. In addition, Budrys seems to be trying to say some
thing about the nature of art, and about the ways in which
art can try to deal with science. But in cramming all this
into such a small space, he has sacrificed the detail and
density which might have made it more believable. And,
whether accidentally or deliberately, he has sacrificed a
great deal more by his reliance upon pulp shortcuts in style
and characterization.
The setting, for example, is quite indefinite. The
season is indeterminate, and the only day named is a
symbolic "good" Friday when Barker first "dies," yet the
year is clearly given as 1959, already past when the novel
appeared, suggesting perhaps that the book is more a fantasy
than a prediction, but suggesting as well some reliance upon
the details of contemporary reality. The place is never
specified, either, leaving Los Angeles the most likely area,
for reasons of symbolism rather than of local coloring. The
region has a coastline, it is in a time-zone differing from
324
Washington, D.C., it has at least one major electronics firm
involved in the space program, and it apparently is inhab
ited by a number of idiosyncratic characters. The western
coast is preferable, presumably, because it is the end of
the American frontier, and its ocean is more future-
oriented, less involved with historic ties and associations,
but none of this is stated by Budrys. Los Angeles or
Southern California is indicated because of its relative
freedom for living styles, its involvement with the space
program, its stable weather, and not least, its identifica
tion with the fantasy world of Hollywood, but this also is
left unexplained. Even the locales are left shadowy and
vague: the laboratory, Barker's cliffside house, and
Elizabeth's studio are not exactly suffused with local
color; the moon base is also indistinct, and located on the
dark side of the moon, the side never seen from earth; the
only thing, in fact, that Budrys describes in any detail is
the lunar artifact, which is still left rather enigmatic.
The characters, for the most part, are imagined less
as real people than as symbolic constructs, who can almost
be summed up entirely, in terms of their names. Hawks, the
scientist-as-hero, is high-flying and rapacious. Barker,
the adventurer-hero, is aggressive and sharp-tongued and
perhaps somewhat of a "con-man" (like a circus barker).
Connington is even more obviously a "con-artist," making a
living out of manipulating people, and he sees himself as
325
"cunning," whereas others see him as fat ("ton") and
ineffectual. Claire Pack is a kind of glorified camp-
follower, whose intentions are always clear ("clair"), and
who is accused by Barker of "eating carrion." Elizabeth
Cummings may be imagined by Hawks to be regal, but her last
name is an ironic comment on his adolescent conception of
"pure" love. The other characters, some of whom are also
symbolically named, are even less developed than these.
When characters are described, it is often in terms
of bodily movements, such as empty smiles and gestures,
which may be intended to represent frustrated violence or to
invest the characters with a thingness like that of machin
ery. But the device is employed so frequently as to seem
almost a tic on the part of Budrys, or a pulp fiction device
which keeps things moving and fills out the total number of
words (science fiction magazines pay by the word). Hawks,
Barker, and Claire are each referred to as "thin," as if
this word could make them appear more "hungry" and in better
"fighting" shape than the portly Connington. Touching
things, especially machines, is a characteristic of Hawks,
while touching people is representative of Claire. Barker
is continually being related to images of war and competi
tion, and shows his contempt for others by comparing them
with animals. Some of these devices are effective, but they
are practically all that Budrys relies on for characteriza
tion. Most of the action seems to be unconnected with
326
thought or motivation, and that which is explained is
handled in terms of speeches, mostly by Hawks, which seem
taken from a book on elementary psychology translated into
more or less colloquial speech. The final effect is of
stiffly jointed puppets, dabbed with paint, and dandled on
strings.
Much of what has been said can be said to be criti
cism of Budrys1 style, and the impression it gives of the
narrator and/or Hawks as somewhat lacking in intelligence
and discrimination. But style is also a matter of specific
words, and sounds, and sentence structure, and here, perhaps
especially, Budrys reveals his training in pulp fiction.
He uses a distinctly limited vocabulary, avoiding even
science fictional jargon for the most part, concentrating
apparently on the fastest and most direct way of saying
things. Sentences and paragraphs are short, even choppy,
dominated by short, hard verbs, resulting in a staccato
rhythm that, at its best, has the compression of poetry, but
that often deteriorates into the hard-boiled manner of the
tough guy detective story. With such a rapid pace precipi
tating the reader from event to event, presumably he will
not notice that the only flavor added to these direct
statements comes from cursory adverbial modifiers. A common
shortcut in the writing of pulp fiction, these adverbs and
adverbial phrases almost pass unnoticed, but they avoid the
necessity of writing dialogue or description which expresses
327
itself well enough not to need such additives. They are
most noticeable when, as in Rogue Moon, they are at their
most awkward or uninformative, as in clumsy sentences like
"Barker got clumsily up to his feet" (p. 28) and "Barker
came quietly upward out of his chair" (p. 116) or in
obtrusive speech tags like "drily," "huskily," "evenly,"
23
"uncertainly," and a myriad of others.
The language does rise occasionally to the level of
minor poetry, as in the pseudo-Arthurian exchange of
dialogue between Barker and the Naval ensign preparing him
for his first test, and where Budrys puts words to rela
tively unusual usage: "the kitchen door of the house sighed
shut on its airspring" (p. 29), "his eyes were looking out
through the narrow mask of his lashes" (p. 110), "fluores-
cents tittered into light" (p. 126). But in such cases it
seems obviously contrived, in relationship to the flatness
of the whole. His use of images is frequently effective,
concrete in description, central to an action, suggestive of
relationships, and his description of the lunar artifact is
quite a tour de force, but the language involved is seldom
more than adequate. His command of tone seems particularly
weak; though there are occasional snatches of poetry, such
23
For more detailed criticism of this kind of
proliferation of adverbs in science fiction, and the
related problem of strange verbs being substituted for
"said," see William Atheling, Jr. [James Blish], The^Issue
at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction,
ed. James Blish (Chicago, 1964), especially pp. 81-86,
109-112.
328
as the mad Rogan's babbled phrase, "an dark and nowhere
starlights" (pp. 5, 119), to try to convey the awe of the
adventure, the book as a whole seems to alternate between
an aura of menace, suspense, and presumed but not demon
strated suppressed violent emotion and an aura of adoles
cent, oozing sentimentality, neither of which is particu
larly fitting to the author's apparent philosophical and
artistic aims.
Thus the style seems inadequate to the content, the
execution to the conception. Yet the failure is not abso
lute, rather it is suggestive of what might be accomplished
under other circumstances. For a science fiction audience,
style and characterization are non-essentials, length and
development are secondary to immediate impact, clarity of
structure, and original ideas and variations. Even from a
literary standpoint, it can be seen that Budrys has tried to
tell his story in terms of people, in terms of human needs
and desires, and that, under certain restrictions, he has
managed to compress a great deal, and to suggest much by an
elaborate use of symbolism. An author with more sensitiv
ity, with more regard for human realities and for words,
might well have written a better novel, but without Budrys'
science fictional vision, he probably would never have
conceived of it.
CHAPTER VIII
J. G. BALLARD: THE CRYSTAL WORLD (1966)
The most controversial figure in science fiction in
the 1960's has been J[ames] G[raham] Ballard, whose stories
and novels since 1956 have bewildered and even infuriated
fans and readers accustomed to the old established conven
tions and unwilling to change their ways.^ In a guest
editorial for the British science fiction magazine New
Worlds in 1962, Ballard made his attack quite explicit:
"Science fiction must jettison its present narrative forms
and plots. Most of these are far too explicit to express
any subtle interplay of character and theme. ... I think,
most of the hard work will fall, not on the writer and
editor, but on the readers. The onus is on them to accept
a more oblique narrative style, understated themes, private
symbols and vocabularies." He goes on to say that not only
are aliens and interstellar travel dispensable, but the
^"See MIT Index and supplements (above, chapter I,
note 35) for bibliographical information. See Contemporary
Authors, VII-VIII (1963) for biographical information.
^J. G. Ballard, "Which Way to Inner Space?" New
Worlds, May, 1962, pp. 117-118.
329
330
whole emphasis on physical science and engineering should be
abandoned in favor of the biological sciences (including
psychology), because "the only truly alien planet is
Earth. "3
In "The Venus Hunters," a novelette published the
following year, Ballard elaborated his position in both
practice and precept.^ Essentially a sketch of the personal
relationship which develops between Ward, a new astronomer
at a major observatory, and Kandinski, an apparent crackpot
who claims to have seen and talked with aliens whose space
ship landed on Earth, this story is unusual for Ballard in
that it does involve aliens and interstellar travel, both of
which are real within the fictional context, but it is also
unusual for science fiction before Ballard, because the
aliens' existence is less important than what people think
about it.
Ward insists at first on treating Kandinski's book
on the landings as science fiction, which he brushes off as
trivial: "Perhaps I'm too skeptical. I can't take it
seriously." When Kandinski counters that Ward takes it
too seriously, Ward shifts his ground: "It's not so much
the sensationalism that puts me off as the psychological
3"Which Way," p. 117.
^J. G. Ballard, "The Venus Hunters," Terminal Beach
(New York, 1964), pp. 85-115. Originally published as "The
Encounter," Amazing, June, 1963, this story is not included
in the British collection, confusingly titled The Terminal
Beach, which was also published in 1964.
331
implications. Most of the themes in these stories come
straight out of the more unpleasant reaches of the uncon
scious." Kandinski sees through this gambit, also, and
voices another disclaimer: "That sounds rather dubious and,
if I may say so, second-hand. Take the best of these
stories for what they are: imaginative exercises on the
theme of tomorrow."^ Another character, Professor Cameron,
also of the observatory, sees Kandinski*s existence almost
as conclusive proof of Jung's thesis that the sighting of
flying saucers is a part of the mass hysteria accompanying
the end of a Platonic Great Year. Cameron, too, has some
thing to say about science fiction and the unconscious:
"Most people regard Charles Kandinski as a lunatic,
but as a matter of fact he is performing one of the
most important roles in the world today, the role
of a prophet alerting people to this coming crisis.
The real significance of his fantasies, like that
of the ban-the-bomb movements, is to be found else
where than on the conscious plane, as an expression
of the immense psychic forces stirring below the
surface of rational life, like the isotactic move
ments of the continental tables which heralded the
major geological transformations. . . .
". . . It's unfortunate for Kandinski, and for
the writers of science fiction for that matter,
that they have to perform their task of describing
the symbols of transformation in a so-called
rationalist society, where a scientific, or at
least a pseudo-scientific explanation is required
a priori. And because the true prophet never deals
Tn what may be rationally deduced, people such as
Charles Kandinski are ignored or derided t o d a y . "6
"Venus," pp. 93-94.
^"Venus," pp. 107-108. See also C. G. Jung, Flying
Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, trans.
R 7 F. C7 Hull' ' ( N e w ' York, T95T). ---------------
332
Ward, however, comes to like and to believe
Kandinski, and even interrupts a major scientific confer
ence to see the space-ship for himself when it lands again.
He even goes so far as to isstxe a joint communique on the
landing, but it does not lend credence to Kandinski, rather
opening Ward himself to derision. His reputation ruined
and his job lost, he is about to leave for Princeton (where
he will have the lowly task of teaching freshman physics),
when Kandinski stops him and tries to persuade him to con
tinue the crusade:
"Ward, you can't drop your responsibilities like
this!*
"Please, Charles," Ward said, feeling his temper
rising. He pulled his hand away but Kandinski seized
him by the shoulder and almost dragged him off the
car.
Ward wrenched himself away. "Leave me alone!"
he snapped fiercely. "I saw your space-ship, didn't
I?"7
Although aliens and spaceships exist in this story,
Ballard's concern is in the area where they, the "science
fictions" of the tale, intersect with reality, or where
fiction meets reality in general. In keeping with his
earlier manifesto, he emphasizes man and Earth, and the
reader is presented with, in Ballard's words, an "oblique
narrative style" and an "understated theme." In one sense,
the theme of the story is the nature of science fiction,
and the story is so constructed that all three spokesmen
^"Venus," p. 115.
333
are discredited by their obvious biases, making their state
ments incomplete at best.
Yet each of the critiques offered can be applied to
science fiction, perhaps especially as Ballard writes it.
He exploits quite deliberately themes from "the more
unpleasant reaches of the unconscious." He prophesies of
unpleasantnesses likely to come. And he is also quite aware
that what he is writing is fiction, that its explanations
are window-dressing, and that its content should not be
taken "too seriously," but rather treated as an "imaginative
exercise on the theme of tomorrow."
Ballard has not been preaching anything new. Occa
sional science fiction stories have dealt with his themes
for over thirty years and only in the conservative reaches
of popular fiction could his style and narrative method be
g
considered innovative. But his practice is consistent with
itself and with his precepts, and he provides a focal point
for the long-predicted intermingling of science fiction and
mainstream literature. Ballard's works are symptomatic of
the growing consciousness of science fiction writers, not
g
In some of his more recent stories, however,
Ballard has been experimenting with a fragmented form in
which chronology and character become confused, although
there is unity of theme. See "The Assassination Weapon,"
in Best S. F. Stories from New Worlds, ed. Michael Moorcock
(London, 1967), about which Moorcock writes that it is "one
of a group of stories which explore the possibilities of a
form which is largely Mr. Ballard's own invention and which
is without doubt one of the most successful developments of
its kind since Joyce" (p. 7).
334
only that their themes and symbols are becoming common
property, but also that their literature has definite
connections with contemporary life and letters.
Ballard has so far published nine books in the
United States, including five collections of stories: The
Voices of Time (1962), Billennium (1962), Passport to
Eternity (1963), Terminal Beach (1964), and The Impossible
Man (1966). The majority of these stories were published
first in England, and almost all of them reflect his concen
tration on "inner space," a term popularized by J. B.
Priestley's 1953 diatribe against science fiction's stereo-
g
types of outer space. Most of them reflect a preoccupation
with time, especially time past and time made solid or
spatial by some symbol or monument, and with landscapes of
desolation, which correspond to the internal sense of empty
time and space in his protagonists, who are often beyond
action, beyond hope, even beyond communication. Shifting
sands and desolate seas are frequently sketched in his
stories, including a series set in the decaying artists'
colony of "Vermilion Sands," where old myths may be
re-enacted before powerless observers, and poets are known
by the style of type in their automatic writing machines.^
Q
J. B. Priestley, "Thoughts in the Wilderness:
They Come from Inner Space," New Statesman and Nation,
December 5, 1953, pp. 712, 714T
■^The specific story referred to is "Studio 5, The
Stars," Billennium (New York. 1962). Others in the series
include: 1 'Prima Be1ladonna, also in Billennium; "The
335
But whereas such devices can be used lightly in a short
story, a novel based on similar material needs a good deal
of depth and detail about the scene, the events, and the
people. What can be a semisweet melancholy in a shorter
form becomes an enervating, exhausting despair in the
longer.
Ballard's first novel, The Wind from Nowhere (1961),
traces the struggle of several survivors against a wind
which inexplicably rises five miles per hour each day all
over the world. They end up at a giant pyramid (without
giant foundations) built by the multimillionaire Hardoon to
withstand the wind and glorify himself. The wind wins,
however, and then begins to die down, again for no known
reason. The narrative conventionally shifts from character
to character until the final group is assembled, and concen
trates on the steadfastness of Britons in the face of
adversity.
The Drowned World (1962) has an equally mysterious
catastrophe, but it focuses on one man and his reactions.
The biologist Robert Kerans gradually succumbs to the lure
of the South, the sun, and the prehistoric past which, in
waking dreams, dominate his meager existence in a world
where only the polar regions are fit for human habitation.
Thousand Dreams of Stellavista," Passport to Eternity
(New York, 1963); "The Screen Game," The Impossible Man
(New York, 1966); "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D," F&SF,
December, 1967.
336
The Burning World (1964) continues Ballard's journey through
the unconscious, this time of a Doctor Charles Ransom,
attempting to survive in a world where the oceans have
receded and the rains don't fall. Industrial pollution of
nature is blamed in part for the catastrophe, and human
penance seems mystically related to the rain's return at
the book's end.
In all three cases, there is a pointed contrast
between heroes and villains, both treated rather strangely,
and a clearly implied relationship between mental states
and physical environments. Least effective is the first
book, which has too many protagonists and too much reliance
on stereotyped human villainy: Hardoon and his paramilitary
henchmen are too obviously comic-book figures, not worth the
effort expended by either the wind or Ballard to get rid of
them. The isolated scapegoats of the latter two books,
dragging themselves along to survive in a fatal environment,
manage to achieve some human personality as they try to
understand themselves, others, and the mental landscapes
which imprison them as much as do the physical. The
villains, men who are wealthy despite or because of the
catastrophe, control other people and trained animals which
menace the protagonists, yet which seem to blend into the
landscape, and to resemble dark thoughts in a dream. And
both the good and evil seem to seek some symbolic act which
will restore the world to the way it was. The same sort of
337
situation exists in Ballard's latest, and perhaps best
novel, The Crystal World (1966), which seems to recapitulate
the themes of its predecessors, but also to complete them
and to add something new, in terms of the environment and of
the reaction to it.
The critical reaction to The Crystal World was
generally favorable. Martin Levin wrote in the New York
Times Book Review that Ballard had "effectively streamlined
the archetypal frame of the adventure story, which subsists
11
on sharp moral contrasts, with anti-matter cabalistics."
B. A. Young, writing in Punch, observed that, despite the
absurdity of the catastrophe's explanation, "the story deals
exclusively with the reactions of men to the new phenomenon
and is exciting and literate.Judith Merril expanded the
scope of her F&SF column to give a full-scale critique of
13
the Ballard canon. Insisting that most of his works need
to be read in the context of the others, she describes at
one point the relations between the parts of this latest
trilogy:
Where Drowned World examined time-past in terms of
psychophysical and geophysical evolution--a return
to the womb-of-the-world--and Drought [The^Burning
World] explored the drying-up of life in time-future
11
Review by Martin Levin, New York Times Book
Review, May 15, 1966, p. 41.
12
Review by B. A. Young, Punch, June 1, 1966,
p. 820.
"^Review by Judith Merril, F&SF, August, 1966,
pp. 57-69.
338
from the platform, of the culture-complex of man's
accomplishments till now, CW [sic] presents us with
a (literally, physically) crystallized pattern of
time-now--the frozen present, infinite moment, immor
tality in the instant of I am. In the first book,
archetypal figures were moved[ by powerful blind
biophysic forces to fulfill--or re-enact--their
mythic roles; in the second, elaborately evolved and
multi-faceted allegorical personae picked their way
through an elegant/decadent choreography of desue
tude and devolution on a dying earth; the third book
is actively inhabited by individuals entirely alive
and aware in the only moment of reality we know at
all--the eternally passing present we call now,
where the focus in space expands as time narrows
down, and action shots of life-in-process are not
only possible, but inevitable.14
Because of its position in the trilogy and because, unlike
its predecessors, it is "a novel, and a good one," she
concludes that The Crystal World is his best work to date,
and a good sign for science fiction and for the literature
into which it and the main stream are merging. Miss
Merril1s judgment of Ballard and of the present and future
meaning of "SF" are not shared throughout the science
fiction field, but even the reviewers for Analog and Galaxy,
although they did not review the novel, have given Ballard
some qualified approval, Miller somewhat quizzically, Budrys
despite a passionate dislike of the Ballard school of
"inertial science fiction."^
^\lerril, p. 61.
^P. Schuyler Miller, "The Reference Library,"
Analog, January, 1967, p. 166; Algis Budrys, "Galaxy Book
shelf, Galaxy, December, 1966, p. 128, but see also
August, 1966, pp. 188-189, and October, 1967, pp. 192-193.
339
The book itself, The Crystal World, is a novel of
about 48,000 words, divided into two parts of roughly equal
length."*" The first six chapters show us Edward Sanders, a
doctor from a leprosarium, finding his way to a crystallized
forest in the heart of Africa, ostensibly in search of
Suzanne Clair, the (married) woman he loves. On the way he
meets a French newspaperwoman, Louise Peret, to whom he
makes love and becomes somewhat attached, a mine-owner named
Thorensen, a military physician by the name of Radek, a
melancholy priest, Father Balthus, dressed in black, and a
fussy little madman dressed in white, named Ventress.
The last eight chapters are told in retrospect,
framed by a letter in which Sanders, two months later,
resigns his hospital post and predicts his return to the
forest. In the interim, he has twice gotten lost in and
narrowly escaped from the forest. The first time he was
caught in a running gun-battle, the focus of which,
Ventress' tubercular young wife, Serena, Thorensen was
trying to protect from her husband. Finding refuge with
Suzanne and her husband Max, at their little hospital,
Sanders found time, after Louise's arrival, to make love to
both women. Later, looking for Suzanne, he fell asleep at
the forest's edge, and woke to find his arm crystallized,
presaging for him the living death from which he had earlier
"^J. G. Eallard, The Crystal World (New York, 1966).
All page references in text refer to this edition.
340
freed Radek. With the help of Ventress, who advised him to
run, and Balthus, who gave him a jewelled cross, Sanders
fled again. On his way out, he ran across Serena crystal
lized alive, Thorensen and his henchmen dead, Ventress
running for survival, and Suzanne and some native lepers
celebrating the coming of the universal crystallization.
The last chapter concludes with Sanders, watched by Louise
and Max, going up the river again in a speedboat.
As in the previous novels, the basic science fiction
consists of the catastrophe and its explanation. Although
flood myths are ancient, the science fictional catastrophe
story is a modern variation involving four basic elements:
an unprecedented world-wide catastrophe (atomic attack,
alien visitation, natural cataclysm), a scientific explana
tion which may blame man and/or suggest solutions, a group
of survivors (usually relatively random), and an attempt
to do something constructive (escape with a whole skin,
join with other refugees, overcome the menace, preserve
something of civilization). The horrors of devastation and
the primitive reaction of man to survive at all costs are
usually stressed. Ballard, however, takes the catastrophe
less for its own sake and more as a metaphor for the human
condition, using the obligatory scientific explanation, if
at all, partly to mollify the reader's desire for material
causation and partly to heighten the symbolism, but not as
a basis for a solution. His characters, for whom survival
341
seems more a matter of reflex than of will, try as indi
viduals to find in the devastation something to live for.
Like its predecessors, The Crystal World is set in
the immediate future, insuring the treatment of science and
technology at their present stage of development; very
little is ever at all advanced over contemporary technolog
ical hardware. None of the usual props of science fiction
make an appearance in this particular novel (the Echo
satellite, mentioned twice, is of course already in exist
ence) ; vehicles and machines are not evoked to impress us
with marvels. An automobile, a boat, and a helicopter fall
victim to the crystallization, recalling their ruined
counterparts in the first two parts of the trilogy. In The
Drowned World a helicopter is downed and boats are a major
means of transport. In The Burning World, a houseboat
aground in a drying river is the hero's hideaway, and cars
become such useless hunks of metal that their parts are
scavenged for pavilions, shacks, and other structures
apparently viewed by Ballard as folk or "pop" art.
A scientist is again the protagonist but Dr.
Sanders, like Kerans and Dr. Ransom before him, is not a
savior or a hero, merely a lost soul trying to find some
meaning in the contemporary world. The fact that he is a
medical man, unable to cure himself, unwilling to practice
his sacred profession, suggests how deep the contemporary
malaise must be, but how extensive it is is uncertain,
342
since there are two other medical men in this book as well.
Suzanne's husband, Dr. Max Clair, is clearly on the side of
life as we know it, tending to his patients, refusing to
get involved in his wife's love affairs with Sanders and
the crystals, refusing even to treat the doomed native
lepers who gather outside his hospital, attracted by the
crystallized forest and attracting the attention of Sanders
and Suzanne. The French military doctor, Radek, becomes a
symbol of death, or the living death awaiting everyone from
the crystallization. Torn loose by Sanders and thrust into
the river's swift current, he later confronts his would-be
benefactor as a grotesque parody of a human being, no longer
encysted but marked by raw wounds from the forced separa
tion, and seeking blindly to return to the forest of which
he had become a part, both physically and psychologically.
Thus Sanders is framed between life and death, his every
vacillation seen as tending toward the extremes symbolized
by Clair and Radek.
Even his occupation is ambiguous, especially in the
light of his behavior and attitude toward it. A medical
doctor, he is confused by the customs officials with a
physicist they are expecting, yet Radek later suggests,
ominously, that Sanders' experience with leprosy may be of
more value in dealing with the strange phenomena, which
Radek seems to regard as a kind of virus, than the physi
cist's theories can be. Ostensibly a healer and restorer
343
to life, Sanders has concentrated on leprosy, apparently
fascinated by its slow but visible development, which
Ventress compares to the progress of life toward death.
Partly by unconscious design, Sanders himself contracted
the malady, as did Suzanne, when she worked with him and
the natives. Their infection is revealed at a time of love-
making, which almost makes it seem a venereal disease,
passed on in the supposedly life-giving act of intercourse.
Although Sanders is the closest to a scientific
spokesman in The Crystal World, his attempt to understand
the crystallization is not undertaken in order that he may
help stop its advance, as Radek hoped, but for purely
personal reasons, as he indicates in the first part of his
letter of resignation:
. . . what most surprised me, Paul, was the extent
to which I was prepared for the transformation of
the forest. ... I accepted all these wonders as
part of the natural order of things, part of the
inward pattern of the universe. ... I quickly
came to understand it, knowing that its hazards
were a small price to pay for its illumination of
my life. . . .
. . . the very absence of surprise confirms my
belief that this illuminated forest in some way
reflects an earlier period of our lives, perhaps
an archaic memory we are born with of some ances
tral paradise where the unity of time and space is
the signature of every leaf and flower. ... In
the forest life and death have a different meaning
from that in our ordinary lack-lustre world. Here
we have always associated movement with life and
the passage of time, but from my experience within
the forest near Mont Royal I know that all motion
leads inevitably to death, and that time is its
servant. (pp. 93-94)
344
Sanders' explanation, which follows immediately, is
that the phenomenon is a "super-saturation" of matter which
has lost its store of time because of collisions with anti
matter and anti-time. Depending on an interpretation of,
or speculation on, anti-matter unorthodox in or out of
science fiction, this explanation is logical only in a
verbal sense, much as we can speak of a "green sun" or a
"four-dimensional figure" without any concrete examples in
the real world.^ But Ballard is less interested in scien
tifically perceivable actuality than he is in a metaphor to
embody his view of time as something solid or spatial.
Science, or rather scientific knowledge,seems to serve
Ballard mainly as a source of vocabulary, vocabulary open
to vague and suggestive usage, unlike the precise and func
tional meanings assigned it in scientific research.
Pseudo-scientific jargon may be required by the
conventions of science fiction, but for Ballard it really
only deepens the mystery, rather than clearing it up. And
in the context of Dr. Sanders' relationship with the crystal
forest, even this much explanation is somewhat superfluous.
It is motivated by the need for Sanders to communicate with
the head of his hospital, from which he is resigning, and
his desire to clarify the situation to this man who is
17
"The green sun" is a figure used to demonstrate
the difference between putting two words together and
constructing a "realistic" fantasy-world, in J. R. R.
Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," Tree and Leaf (London, 1964),
p. 45.
345
totally unacquainted with the phenomena. Sanders' own
initial reaction, two months before, is shown by Ballard as
by no means that of a dispassionate observer, or seeker
after knowledge:
For some reason he felt less concerned to find a
so-called scientific explanation for the phenomenon
he had just seen. The beauty of the spectacle had
turned the keys of memory, and a thousand images of
childhood, forgotten for nearly forty years, filled
his mind, recalling the paradisal world when every
thing seemed illuminated by that prismatic light
described so exactly by Wordsworth in his recollec
tion of childhood. The magical shore in front of
him seemed to glow like that brief spring. (p. 77)
To such a poetic, quasi-mystical vision, a "scien
tific explanation" is irrelevant, suggesting to many people
in science fiction that Ballard really does not belong.
Algis Budrys' attack on Ballard as "master of the inertial
science fiction novel" is representative:
A story by J. G. Ballard, as you know, calls for
people who don't think. One begins with characters
who regard the physical universe as a mysterious
and arbitrary place, and who would not dream of
trying to understand its actual laws. Furthermore,
in order to be the protagonist of a J. G. Ballard
novel, or anything more than a very minor character
therein, you must have cut yourself off from the
entire body of scientific education. In this way,
when the world disaster--be it wind or water--
comes upon you, you are tinder no obligation to do
anything about it but sit and worship.18
Viewed as science fiction, Ballard's novels and characters
may well seem inane, but Ballard's relationship to science
fiction is somewhat ambivalent. Although he depends on the
science fiction audience for his livelihood, he uses the
18
Galaxy, December, 1966, p. 128.
346
science fiction cosmos as he sees fit, drawing from it
images, figures, conventions, and rationalizations subor-
19
dinated to the "subtle interplay of character and theme."
The crystal forest is such a science fiction, in
the sense that its physical, concrete reality in the world
of the novel may be explainable only in terms borrowed or
adapted from the discoveries of modern science, but science
apparently can do nothing about it, except to observe and
theorize. The crystallization is real, empirically, in
that it can be seen and felt, but it cannot be trapped for
analysis: photography fails to reproduce more than a dark
glistening; centrifuging a crystallized object, although
the movement removes the crystallization, reveals no phys
ical or chemical additive. Normally, one would expect a
residue of matter or release of energy, but apparently the
agglutinating agent is time, which we cannot stop and
really measure. How the scientists know that time is the
cause Ballard does not indicate, but time is obviously
involved in the continued growth of the phenomenon.
Whatever the mechanism responsible, it appears also to be
manifesting itself elsewhere on Earth, and in outer space
as well. If it continues to grow, these scientists (and
Sanders, apparently the only character in the novel con
vinced of their findings) believe it will not stop until
^"Which Way" (above, note 2), p. 117.
347
the end of time in a startlingly literal sense. Although
science can assign it a material cause and can predict its
future course, prediction and analysis in this case do not
mean control, any more than they do in the parallel, slower
process by which energy declines and entropy increases, as
20
is predicted by the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Two things only seem to resist the crystallization,
both of which are explained pseudo-scientifically, but
interpreted symbolically. Movement, especially rapid move
ment, not only prevents matter from expanding, because it
forces the three spatial co-ordinates into continual change,
but it can also undo crystallization which has already
begun, apparently because the object is returned to normal
space-time where movement is a part of life. The parallel
with life is obvious: growth, decay, change, movement all
distinguish living from non-living things, and man's search
for cultural growth and progress is undertaken in the face
of the inevitable stasis of complete entropy assumed by our
modern cosmology. Thus movement and action are seen as
intrinsically important, in making life what it is, however
absurd they may seem in terms of accomplishing goals which,
by definition, are worthless measured against the eternal
and universal. The other remedy is precious stones, which
supposedly have stored up a large supply of time. Jewels,
20
But see the discussion of entropy in Alan Isaacs,
The Survival of God in the Scientific Age (Baltimore, 1966),
pp. 31-34.
348
of course, are even more obviously symbolic, representing
art, beauty, and values of a strictly cultural nature; here,
as traditionally, they serve as talismans offering escape
from danger, and one particularly effective helper for
Sanders is the large cross given him by Father Balthus,
which adds a suggestion of religious aid as well.
Like Ray Bradbury then, Ballard gives aid and com
fort to the enemies of science by suggesting magical
relations and causation. Like Bradbury, he refuses to
believe that science can solve everything, and even suggests
that science cannot solve anything that is really important
for human beings. But whereas Bradbury writes little
morality plays about man’s potential for good or evil
determining his use of science, Ballard tells of spiritual
odysseys for which science is irrelevant, except as a curi
ous human attitude, or an indirect force far behind the
scenes that turns out objects to balance those of nature in
2i
man's physical environment. Science and science fictions,
like other things and attitudes, are merely counters on the
board where Sanders and his predecessors, Kerans and Ransom,
play the "game" of life in the face of death.
21
See Miller (above, note 14). On Bradbury, see
Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern
Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966), pp. 352-
373, and DamonKnight, In Search of Wonder: Essays on
Modern Science Fiction, rev, ed. (Chicago, 1967), pp. 108-
113. Compare Knight * s denigration of Bradbury in the latter
volume with the role Knight has played in introducing
Ballard to American audiences, according to Algis Budrys,
Galaxy, December, 1966, pp. 128-129.
349
The shape of the book as a whole indicates its
focus on Sanders. It is his voyage inward, geographically
and psychologically, that we are following. What he sees,
experiences, and thinks becomes the subject of the novel,
outlined by the subtitles of the book's subdivisions.
Unnumbered, each chapter bears a title which refers, in
telegraphic, suspense-novel style, to an object or tableau
with symbolic as well as melodramatic significance at the
climax of the chapter. "The dark river" (each subtitle has
only one capitalized letter), for example, describes the
menacing appearance to Sanders in the first chapter of the
river by which he gets to Port Matarre and will late get
to the forest, but it also suggests time, and perhaps blood.
"The prismatic sun" at the end refers explicitly to the
apparent beginnings of crystallization in the sun, but it
also reminds us of the sun's appearance within the forest,
of the appearance of the forest itself, and of Sanders'
final rejection of black and white and gray, in favor of
the fantastic colors of the crystal world.
The first half of the book, describing Sanders'
approach to and first entrance into the forest, is entitled
"Equinox." The title refers first of all to the date,
March 21, and also to the condition of light and shadow, of
extreme white and black, at Port Matarre, near to but not
quite at the forest. The balance of day and night suggests
to Sanders the need to act, to commit himself in some way.
350
By making love to Louise, for all that she seems to resemble
Suzanne, he tips the balance, revealing to himself that
Suzanne is not his real reason for going to Mont Royal, and
foreshadowing the headlong attraction the forest itself
will have on him. The equality of day and night is paral
lelled by the black and white figures of Father Balthus and
Ventress, who travelled upriver with him, who seem to menace
him, yet who as yet mean nothing to him.
The second half, concerning Sanders' adventures in
and around the forest, bears the title "The Illuminated
Man," a phrase which appears in the epigraph and in the
conclusion of Sanders' letter: "by night the illuminated
man races among the trees, his arms like golden cartwheels
and his head like a spectral crown" (p. 203). In the con
text of the letter, written after the doctor's second escape
from the forest, the reference is apparently to the figure
of Ventress which Sanders visualizes still running through
the forest to avoid crystallization, as if the time elapsed
where Sanders is, outside the forest, had not affected
anything within the forest. But Sanders himself has been
forced to run the same way when he was inside the area of
crystallization, and "illumination" also suggests light and
color, contrasting with the black and white of others'
appearances and moral values, which Sanders now seems to
feel he has transcended. The actions of others, whether
they are trying to use him (as are Ventress and Thorensen)
351
or he is attempting to make use of them (Louise, Suzanne,
and Max), hardly touch him beyond the surface, where they
are seen as tending toward irrelevance and absurdity. "The
illuminated man" should then be Sanders himself in his
"enlightenment," which he considers a kind of mystical
peace, but which may also be seen as an obsession. By
extension, the phrase may refer to man in general, or to
any man who has achieved peace and acceptance of death,
whether by chemical or mechanical, mystical or rational
means.
Although the narrative is in third person, the
narrator is limited to Sanders1 point-of-view. Thus we see
everything and everyone else as he does, but we do not
really see Sanders from outside. Occasional philosophical
asides, sketchy explanations, and statements about other
characters' motivations, although presented in third person,
seem to be meant as Sanders' observations, since they are
in keeping with his oversimplified view of anything outside
himself. In the novelette, "The Illuminated Man," which
contains this novel in embryo, the protagonist and the
narrator are the same, a professional journalist named,
appropriately, James B.--, and the observations are obvi
ously those of the man who is being overcome by the
22
forest. The second part of the novel maintains this
^J. G. Ballard, "The Illuminated Man," F&SF,
May, 1964, pp. 5-31.
352
relationship somewhat, since the events are reviewed within
the context of Sanders' letter, but the narrator has a
separate existence beyond that. The separation of narrator
and protagonist is incomplete, however, and the apparent
overlapping of consciousness contributes to the reader's
unsureness as to just what is the real world of the novel.
From Sanders' viewpoint, then, the actions and
intrigues of others, even where they involve himself, are
all melodramatic and pointless, the other characters are
all rather like silhouettes, posturing and ambiguous, with
ominous names and behavior, and only the setting is solid
and detailed, something to which he can relate.
As he gets more and more deeply involved with the
crystal world, Sanders becomes superficially involved with
other people and their relationships with him, with each
other, and with the forest, but not enough that it changes
him, or that it allows any of them to become a solid
character. He is one of the principles in a romantic
quadrangle which appears to be rather low-key, raising no
great amount of passion or jealousy in any of the partici
pants. Max and Louise both accept with relative equanimity
Sanders' relationship with Suzanne. Sanders' love-making
with Louise and Suzanne in succeeding chapters seems to
rouse him only to a dispassionate comparison: Louise, taken
outside the affected zone, is sunny, warm, and alive;
Suzanne, in the outskirts of the forest, is shadowed, cold,
353
and dead, marked with the leonine mask of the leprosy that
he and she share. In the end, he rejects Louise's plea
that he return to civilization, choosing instead the crystal
forest of which Suzanne by now has presumably become a part,
but the choice hardly involves either woman as a person.
The mere idea that people had sexual intercourse was
seldom allowed in science fiction a few years ago, and Harry
Harrison could still complain about sexual prohibitions and
23
inhibitions in 1964. But Ballard and others have broken
through those taboos to some extent, and not for the sake of
sheer exhibitionism: there is no clinical detail involved,
and the scenes are not obligatory, not included merely to
show that the author is following a trend. Sex is a part of
life for Edward Sanders, for Louise, and for Suzanne, and it
is in a sense a refuge from the fears aroused by the strange
phenomena. And love, in this situation, seems as meaning
less as death, the kind of death offered Sanders by the guns
of Ventress and Thorensen, whose love triangle contrasts
sharply with Sanders' own.
Ventress, Thorensen, and Serena have no meaning, no
connection, no relationship to Sanders, yet he is continu
ally swept up by the blood feud which pits the white-clad
eccentric against the hulking mine-owner and his black
23
Harry Harrison, "We Are Sitting on Our . . .
[sic]1 1 S. F. Horizons, 1 (Spring, 1964), 39-42. As early
as 1952, however, sex was included in a science fiction
novel by an outsider: Bernard Wolfe, Limbo (New York,
1952).
354
assistants. Both parties threaten Sanders' life, both use
him as bait to attract the other, both let him go for no
more reason than the apparent madness which sets them
against each other. Both want to possess and to hide the
pitiful, tubercular Serena, a young girl who looks ancient,
a sexless creature each claims as his wife, a dying goddess
they attempt to save from crystallization by means of gifts
of jewels. A spark of the doctor in Sanders revives when
he sees her, but his advice, that she be removed from the
forest, would only prolong her agony; the forest offers her
eternity, as it does later for Balthus, for Suzanne, and
for Sanders himself. The feud is finally won by Ventress,
who kills Thorensen's men one by one and then kills
Thorensen himself. But Thorensen, dead, shares the bed of
the serene, immortal Serena, and Ventress, alive, is forced
to run forever to avoid the fate, alone, which he had sought
to share with her. The whole intrigue is rendered even more
absurd by the fact, later known to Sanders, that they will
all, living or dead, be caught up eventually in the
universal crystallization.
None of these characters seems to have any real
existence except in relation to Sanders. Persons have
meaning and value only insofar as they embody his situation
symbolically, lead him toward his final solution, or try to
bring him back to the outside world. They frequently seem
to be posing, like static figures in a frieze, unreal,
355
vague, and, to use a favorite word of Ballard’s, "ambigu
ous." No doubt it is partly because they are such puppets,
their motivations hidden from the unimaginative, unempathic
Sanders, that the novel has such an aura of mystery. Where
they do take part in the action, it is often with the
growls, snaps, twitches, grimaces, and other meaningless
gestures so common in pulp fiction. Much of what dialogue
there is allows of little hesitation, circumlocution, even
thought. Short and direct, as in a conventional suspense-
novel, such speeches imply total communication, which is
certainly not the case here. Except where the situation is
simple and functional, as in giving directions, Ballard's
characters tend to commune with themselves (and with the
reader), their remarks only partly, and almost accidentally,
register with each other, since no one is really listen-
0 /
ing. Sanders, particularly, sees and hears and under
stands only what he wants or needs to, in order to get
along, until he can achieve his mystical union with the
world of crystal.
Dialogue and interpersonal communication play a
rather minor role, actually, the description of things
taking up the major share of the book. Ballard seems highly
interested in what effects he can achieve by balancing light
2 /
This non-communication, too, could be viewed as
just another convention, at least since Chekhov, one which
is basic to the theater of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter,
and others, but it is a convention seldom exploited in
science fiction.
356
and shadow, forms and shapes, landscapes and objects,
animals and people, in and out of the area of crystalliza
tion. Light and color are rampant in the forest, whose
brightness seems to make the outside world drab and dark by
contrast. Even at night, the moonlight suffices to trigger
the prismatic effect that the crystals have on light, but
by day the crystal world is a "maze of rainbows" and a
"blaze of colors." Repetitive use of such words as
"crystal," "prism," "glass," "jewels," and "ice," rather
than specific naming of individual colors, serves to remind
the reader of the kaleidoscope of color within the affected
area, while "black" and "white," "light" and "dark" empha
size the drabness of the surroundings. Jewels and ice
serve also to evoke contrast of temperature, ice being asso
ciated with the coolness within the forest and the waves of
cold that accompany each advance of the crystallization,
jewels preserving some time and life in opposition to the
crystal growth, even as they give up their color and luster.
Trees and plants and stones, rivers and roads, houses and
furnishings, machines, costumes, are all described in more
detail within the zone than outside it, their weird shapes
and colors attracting Sanders’ attention. From outside,
figures inside, moving or still, appear ghostly white or
blazing with color, and Sanders himself, on his emergence,
is said to glow in the dark. And it is only against this
fantastic background that the actions and movements of the
357
characters, relatively senseless in themselves, are given
some meaning.
Movement resists the crystallization and is in turn
resisted by it. Sanders and Ventress run to escape the
crystals and they, as well as Thorensen and his men, are
seen to participate in a grotesque ballet, running toward
and away from each other, as knives and bullets and cannon
balls fly through the air. Crocodiles stumble about, one
of them dead and hollowed out for one of Thorensen's hench
men who, gunning for Ventress, almost sxicceeds in shooting
Sanders. Crystallized birds are seen occasionally, one of
them even flying from his branch in apparent violation of
the crystal world's natural laws (Radek and Sanders suffer
severe wounds after being torn away from crystals of which
they have begun to be a part). Cars on the road and boats
on the river are stopped from moving; even a helicopter
that stayed too long on the ground is brought to earth with
a crash when its crystallized rotors jam in mid-air. The
one vehicle started again is Thorensen's boat, which
advances only a little as a result of the firing of its
cannon (the speed of the movement and the vibration appar
ently overcoming the crystals for a moment, as do the
rivals' hand-guns and rifles).
Things are prominent in the identification of
characters: Ventress and Balthus are known by the color of
their clothing, Louise by her sunglasses' covering half of
358
her face, Serena by her jewels, Suzanne by her face which to
Sanders is "a pale lantern." The characters' actions, too,
are given meaning largely by virtue of their association
with things. Thus the jewels, with their "stored-up time,"
not only give warmth and life of a sort to Serena, but also
give meaning to the character of Father Balthus. In the
first part of the book, he is enraged by the sight of a
crucifix which, along with plants and stones and the like,
was left by a native on the forest's outskirts, so that it
could become crystallized into an item for sale to tourists.
Calling it obscene, Balthus shakes it angrily, making the
crystals disappear, "light pouring from them as from a
burning taper" (p. 33). In the second part, when Sanders
stumbles on him, playing the organ in his forest-surrounded
chapel, Balthus is a changed man, having given in to the
heresy which had so angered him earlier. After giving
Sanders a few days' sanctuary, he thrusts into the doctor's
arms a large jewelled cross, and assumes a crucifixion
position in anticipation of his martyrdom. The cross
enables Sanders to escape, and also to perform another
godlike but futile act of resurrection, freeing a young
native child who has begun to crystallize. With fitting
irony, Sanders is charged with grand theft when the jewels
are seen to be missing from the cross; he is saved by the
living, Max and Louise, at whose suggestion soldiers test
out his defense, invading the forest for a short time, as
359
if exorcising its evil spirit with more jewelled crosses.
Sanders, perhaps the only one to whom the news has
really penetrated that the crystallization is universal and
inevitable, is well aware that his escape can only be tempo
rary. One reason for his emergence may have been a desire
to say good-bye, to life, to the outside world, to Max and
Louise and his colleague at the hospital. But he knows now
that the only sane attitude to take toward the forest is to
avoid not only struggles and intrigue (the response of
Ventress and Thorensen) but also love and attachments (the
response of Max and Louise), and to welcome the coming of
the crystallization by becoming a part of it. This is what
Radek and others have done, involuntarily perhaps, but any
later separation is even more involuntary. This is what
Father Balthus does, believing that he and the Church have
outlived their usefulness when "divinity can be seen to
exist in every leaf and flower" (p. 193). This is what the
hopeless native lepers do, when Max and Sanders reject them,
and what Suzanne does, when she joins the natives to lead
them in their ceremonial dances of welcome. In each volun
tary case, the final step is a gesture of acceptance, not
merely of death, but of a kind of immortality, a kind of
life in death repugnant at first but ultimately desirable.
And finally, this is what Sanders must do, partly to escape
the world of action and decision-making, partly to rejoin
Suzanne, partly to become immortalized in a kind of jewelled
360
setting which ultimately no one will be able to see and
appreciate, since they will all have joined him.
The theme of immortality is underscored by reference
to a painting, "Island of the Dead," by Arnold Bocklin.
This is a familiar gambit of Ballard's, used also in his
previous two novels:
Over the mantelpiece was a huge painting by the
early 20th century surrealist Delvaux, in which
ashen-faced women danced naked to the waist with
dandified skeletons in tuxedos against a spectral
bone-like landscape. On another wall one of Max
Ernst's self-devouring phantasmagoric jungles
screamed silently to itself, like the sump of
some insane unconscious.25
On the right . . . was a reproduction of a small
painting by Tanguy, "Jours de Lenteur." [sic]
With its smooth pebble-like objects, drained of
all associations, suspended on a washed tidal
floor, this painting above all others had helped
to isolate him from the tiresome repetitions of
everyday life.26
But where these books explore landscapes somewhat similar to
those of the paintings, The Crystal World uses the Bocklin,
only briefly alluded to, as a jumping-off point. It is Port
Matarre, with its darkness and shadow, which is compared to
the painting, so the world of crystal which is beyond Port
Matarre is symbolically beyond or transcending death and the
^J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World (New York, 1962),
p. 27.
^J. G. Ballard, The Burning World (New York, 1964),
p. 12. ~
361
27
dead worlds of the earlier volumes in the trilogy.
As is perhaps too often the case with Ballard,
however, this reference stands out obviously as a symbol.
Father Balthus, described as trying not to reveal himself,
suggests the allusion to Sanders, whom he does not know,
as they wait to land and disembark in the novel's opening
pages:
"The light at Port Matarre is always like this, very
heavy and penumbral--do you know Bocklin's painting,
'island of the Dead,' where cypresses stand guard
above a cliff pierced by a hypogeum, while a storm
hovers over the sea? It's in the Kunstmuseum in my
native Basel--" He broke off as the steamer's
engines drummed into life. "We're moving. At last."
(p. 6)
After this, he barely says two sentences to Sanders before
their later encounter in the crystallized forest. Even
here, the symbolic nature of things is left pretty much to
speak for itself, but Ballard frequently spells out his
implications with excruciating thoroughness, as if not
trusting the average science fiction reader to get the
point. For example, after Ventress has smuggled a pistol
through customs in Sanders' suitcase, taking advantage of
the perfunctory inspection given a "leper-doctor," Sanders
is outraged at the ruse: "The snuggling of this pistol
unknown to himself seemed to symbolize, in sexual terms as
well, all his hidden motives for coming to Port Matarre"
27
A painting more analogous to Ballard's crystal
forest, Max Ernst's Eye of Silence, was chosen for the
dust-jacket of the hard-cover edition of The Crystal World
(above, note 15).
362
(p. 21). Again, after Sanders' first escape from the forest
to the Clairs1 hospital, the doctor muses to Louise over
the strange goings-on, in order for the reader to be told
explicitly of Ballard's manipulations: "Looking back, they
all seem to pair off--Ventress with his white suit and the
mine-owner Thorensen with his black gang. . . . Then there
are Suzanne and yourself--you haven't met her but she's your
exact opposite, very elusive and shadowy. When you arrived
this morning, Louise, it was as if you’d stepped out of the
sun. Again, there's Balthus, that priest, with his death-
mask face, though God alone knows who his twin is" (p. 161).
The fact, soon to be revealed, that Sanders also has a
"death-mask," that of the leper, is apparently insufficient
to answer the implied question Sanders ends with, so Ballard
sees to it that Louise clarifies things for us, as she
replies immediately, "Perhaps you, Edward" (p. 161).
Such obviousness may be explainable on the grounds
that he is trying to reach unsubtle readers, but it is out
of keeping with his own demands that readers learn to accept
obliqueness and subtlety. And clumsiness is evident in
other ways as well. The flying crystallized bird is one.
Another is the fact that Louise finds her way to Mont Royal
apparently after the way is blocked. Stylistically, Ballard
often inverts normal word order by starting off a paragraph
with a long descriptive clause, delaying the subject and
main verb to the middle of the sentence. These semi-
363
periodic sentences may add something to the sense of pre
dominance of things over people and their actions, but they
may also be a kind of stylistic tic, an attempt at evoking
elegance.
The fact that these slow, almost meandering
sentences make the reader decrease his pace, and often mark
off paragraphs as conceptual units probably indicates that
they are deliberate attempts at increasing aesthetic
distance. By distancing the reader, however, they also call
attention to themselves, and their own sound and shape is
not always an aesthetic delight, as a couple of random
examples may illustrate:
The sergeant smiled amiably. His relaxed good humor,
uncharacteristic of the military in its dealings
with civilians, suggested to Sanders that perhaps
the events in the forest near by for once had made
these soldiers only too glad to see their fellow men,
whether in uniform or out. (p. 67)
High above, the cupola over the staircase had fallen
through and Sanders could see a cluster of stars,
but the light from the forest below cast the hall
into almost complete darkness. (p. 167)
Not only are these sentences awkward, but they are vaguely
dishonest as well: Are soldiers always uncomfortable with
civilians? Is it the light from below that produces the
darkness? Wouldn't the outside light reduce the visibility
of stars? If not, why the "but"? On the other hand,
Ballard's style is frequently quite appropriate to his
content: "After many delays, the small passenger steamer
was at last approaching the line of jetties, but although
364
it was ten o'clock the surface of the water was still gray
and sluggish, leaching away the somber tinctures of the
collapsing vegetation along the banks" (p. 3). Although
the "but" again seems irrelevant, the "slowness" of the
steamer, the "sluggishness" of the water, and the "collapse"
of the vegetation are emphasized by the diction and word
order.
The everyday vocabulary in the above excerpts is not
exceptionable, exhibiting a precision and freshness rare in
science fiction, but it is not really typical of Ballard
either. As Brian Aldiss notes in an article on Ballard and
two other British writers, "He enjoys encrusting his
sentences with adjective and rare words until, like the
transformations in 'The Illuminated Man,' they hand [sic.
"stand"?] in 'huge pieces of opalescent candy, whose count
less reflections glowed like giant chimeras in the cut-glass
28
walls.'" Ballard's vocabulary in the second part of the
sixth chapter, when Sanders has just entered the forest for
the first time, includes in the span of five pages (84-89)
the following relatively uncommon terms: palisade, minaret,
jasper, mandalas, glace, basalt, panoply, lattices, enclave,
fleur-de-lis, bifurcated, aureoles, iridescent, pilasters,
friezes, annealed, lapis lazuli, vestigial, cuirass, and
armorial. Such ornateness is not out of keeping with the
^Brian Aldiss, "British Science Fiction Now,"
S F Horizons, 2 (Winter, 1965), 31-32.
365
context of the description of the crystal world, but it is
not reserved only for that, nor is it always used with pre
cision even within that specialized context. And once it is
realized that much of the strangeness of the crystal world
is due to the exotic nature of the words describing it, the
sense of awe and wonder momentarily aroused begins to seem a
bit mechanically contrived. Yet the discerning reader can
also appreciate the author's technique, which does not rely
only on ornate vocabulary; relatively simple images, like
the crystallized plant, and the appropriate combination of
sound and sense are also quite effective.
The paragraph where the sentence quoted by Aldiss,
slightly revised, now appears, does offer a good example of
Ballard's style:
Dr. Sanders brushed the frost off his suit, picking
at the crystal splinters embedded like needles in
his hands. The air in the house was cold and
motionless, but as the storm subsided, moving away
across the forest, the process of vitrification
seemed to diminish. Everything in the high-ceilinged
room had been transformed by the frost. Several
plate-glass windows appeared to have been fractured
and then fused together above the carpet, and the
ornate Persian patterns swam below the surface like
the floor of some perfumed pool in the Arabian
Nights. All the furniture was covered by thesame
glace sheath, the arms and legs of the straight-
backed chairs against the walls embellished by
exquisite curlicues and helixes. The imitation
Louis XV pieces had been transformed into huge frag
ments of opalescent candy, whose multiple reflections
glowed like giant chimeras in the cut-glass walls.
(pp. 97-98)
Here we have the exotic vocabulary, allusions to fragments
of culture, the mingling of distancing words like "seemed"
366
and "appeared" (almost epidemic with Ballard) with literal
metaphors, signifying direct transformations. Sense impres
sions begin with Sanders, his pain and his coldness, the
shift spatially to sight, embodying his view of the room
around him. The coldness introduced with the consonants
"f" and "k" seems to remain as they are repeated again and
again, and the "arms and legs" of the chairs suggest not
only Sanders' cold and pain ("needles in his hands") but
also the crystallization of human beings. "Plate-glass"
and "fracture" strike me as subtly onomatopoetic, as do
the quick pronunciations required in reading aloud the
phrases "fused together" and "swam below the surface."
The whole mysterious picture almost demands a culminating
metaphor, which Ballard supplies in double measure, evoking
the images of rock candy and chimeras.
To the exotic vocabulary and the profusion of meta
phors, Ballard adds still a third deliberate mechanism to
evoke the strange and distant: allusion to works of art,
sometimes employed for incongruity (as is the reference to
Louis XV furniture in a context where style and ostentation
are absurd), sometimes to re-inforce the novel's themes of
art and immortality. Bocklin's painting and Wordsworth's
"Immortality Ode," already mentioned, are smoothly inte
grated into the story. The obvious quotation from Shelley--
"Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, stains the white
radiance of eternity" (p. 148)--seems stilted, uttered by
367
Suzanne in conversation with Sanders, just after his first
emergence from the forest. In context, however, it can be
seen either as a device to put him off, so that he does not
come close enough to see the signs of her infection (she is
sitting distant from him and in shadow), or as an indication
of her preoccupation (which Sanders, at this time, might
regard as morbid or deranged) with the crystal forest as an
alternative to deterioration and death. Still, color in the
novel is generally applied to the crystals in sunlight, and
neither light nor crystal is regarded as symbolizing life.
Allusions to Conrad's Heart of Darkness are implicit
in the geographical setting, in the purgatory of the book's
second half, and perhaps in the filtering consciousness of
Sanders' letter; the situation of Serena and her lovers,
too, may owe something to Conrad's sentimental short story,
"The Lagoon." And behind the scenes there seems to lurk the
inspired madness of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."
Like the pulp melodrama and stereotypes, the bits
and pieces of modern technology and the science fictions
associated with them, the allusions and quotations serve
Ballard as raw materials for a collage, which Brian Aldiss
29
has pointed out is a key term for Ballard s art. Scraps
of electrical and automotive equipment become works of art
in The Burning World. Draining the "pool"in The Drowned
World reveals old buildings transformed by seaweed and
^Aldiss, p. 33.
barnacles. The crystallization, too, works changes on
ordinary things like houses, cars, and boats, revealing
strange, quasi-magical shapes. And the net effect is to
produce tableaus of marvels out of ordinary objects and
landscapes.
But these tableaus and landscapes are not only
arresting in themselves, in their strangeness, but also in
terms of their familiarity, their psychological signifi
cance. The ubiquitous waters of the first book in the
trilogy carry Kerans back to the primeval womb of man's
prehistory. The wasteland of burning sands in the second
volume makes Ransom struggle for survival, fighting for
precious drops of water, only to find rain where he has
finally given himself up (as "ransom"?) to the dried lake
where he began his journey, and to the desert of his mind
(he does not notice, perhaps because he is dead or mad,
when the rain begins). The crystal forest, represented as
a present-day phenomenon, is a symbol of infantile regres
sion (like the womb) and of approaching death (like the
desert), but it also represents the immortality offered by
art. The play of black and white, light and shadow, life
and life-in-death, the figures running back and forth across
a strange landscape, the tableaus of posturing men and
frozen plants and animals, the desire of characters to
become crystalline shapes and thus to avoid disfiguring
decay and death, the allusions to the Romantic "religion"
369
of art, all seem to add up to a quest by the author for
artistic immortality. Yet at the same time, his use of
bits and pieces from modern life, cultural and technolog
ical, seems to undercut that aim, reminding us that every
thing but death is transitory.
On the level of novelistic realism, The Crystal
World is not wholly successful. Besides being counters in
a game or notes in counterpoint, the characters could have
been more developed, more consistent, more believable, their
actions better motivated, even granting Sanders' inability
to perceive their depths. Even their function in the novel
could have been more organic, less obviously intended for
symbolic purposes. As a work of literary art, the book
suffers from some problems of style and language, which are
also not excused by Sanders' role in the narration. To be
sure, Ballard does not offer the same faults we see in most
writers of pulp fiction, but he, too, is hampered by many
of the same restrictions. And the fact that he has so
humanized some old conventions, creating a fictional world
in which old dreams and images come true and man's ambiguous
and contradictory desires can be embodied, is a genuine, if
minor, artistic accomplishment.
CONCLUSION
Clearly, these six novels are works of science
fiction. Each presents fantasy as reality, bridging the gap
in part by "scientific” means, telling a story the style and
format of which are determined by the requirements of popu
lar, or pulp fiction. But these works are not merely
elaborations of formulas, whether of science or of popular
fiction. Each author obviously takes part in the contempo
rary "cosmology" of science fiction, borrowing from it
adding to it, subscribing to its basic values. Each author
obviously is aiming his story at an audience habituated to
action, adventure, and wonder, in a "pocket universe" where,
as Algis Budrys has written, "the essential conflict is
between comfortable ignorance and pitiless intelligence."^
But each book succeeds to some extent in making its "scien
tific" content meaningful in human terms, in making its
pulp form viable, and in making its comment on the world.
^Algis Budrys. "Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy, June,
1965, p. 164. Budrys remark is partly in jest, but others
have made similar observations: The conflict is not
between boy and girl or virtue and vice. It is between
Enlightenment, represented by idealistic scientists, and
Stupidity," Stanley Frank, "Out of this World," Nation*s
Business, March, 1952, p. 81. See also Kingsley Amis, New
Maps of~~Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (London, 1961),
pp. 79-81.
370
371
we live in now. And each author has succeeded to some
extent in creating his own unique variation on a number of
themes, in developing his own aesthetic construct, and in
determining his own distinguishable voice, thus making
himself liable for judgment on his own literary vices and
virtues.
All six authors make use of traditional patterns of
fantasy in their novels. Clarke's novel features a utopia,
an extraordinary voyage, contact with the "supernatural,"
and the end of the world. Asimov seems mainly concerned
with the pattern of dystopia, but there are also suggestions
of utopia and of the extraordinary voyage in his book
(suggestions intended for further development in subsequent
volumes of a trilogy). Sturgeon approaches the ideals of
utopia and divinity in terms of his homo gestalt, and relies
to some extent on the machinery of the fairy tale in showing
how his gestalt grows up. Miller's novel employs the motifs
of dystopia, the marvelous journey, and a world-catastrophe,
and suggests as well the concepts of utopia (the cloistered
life) and contact with the supernatural. Budrys1 book is
primarily based on the extraordinary voyage and its
adventures, but it also has overtones of dystopia and the
supernatural, and stresses a novel approach to the mytho
logical motif of death and rebirth. Finally, J. G. Ballard
presents us with an extraordinary journey, a conception of
the end of the world, and suggestions of a kind of utopia or
372
immortality within, dystopia beyond, and the supernatural
above his crystallized forest (all five motifs being invoked
in a third variation in his trilogy).
The traditional dreams that lie behind these conven
tions are given science-fictional twists, however, aimed at
anchoring them more solidly in reality. The setting and
action indicate an outward thrust in space and time, which
should loosen the reader's prejudices concerning contempo
rary actualities. The presence of technological marvels
conceivable, if not yet realized, today is intended to help
him accept the hypothetical possibility of the fictional
world. And the important role played by one or more spokes
men for the scientific world-view is at least partly
intended to reinforce belief in the marvelous phenomena: in
overcoming his professional skepticism, the scientist sets
an example for the reader; in making explanatory pronounce
ments, the scientist acts as a figure of authority, whose
knowledge is to be trusted.
The earth is the physical setting for most of the
action in all six books, and three of them take place in
the present, but the thrust of the fiction tends to be
outward in space and forward in time. In the novels by
Clarke, Asimov, and Miller, the time is the future and
civilization on other worlds is a reality. Budrys' book is
bound to the present, but its characters' major accomplish
ment, taking place on the moon, points toward future
373
developments. Even in Sturgeon's More than Human, limited
to the here and now, the development of the gestalt is
outward, from person to group to race, and the achievement
of maturity points toward the future. Of the six authors,
Ballard is most involved in an inward, psychological jour
ney, but even he takes care to make plain that the crystal
lization is spreading throughout the galaxy, and that the
stopping of time is equivalent to the approach of eternity.
Continuity, from the present to the future, from
the earth into space, is provided primarily by the mind of
man, treated both socially and individually. The cultural
storehouse of man, his "group mind," can only accumulate
information and misinformation, but without it, a man's
sense of continuity could not exist. Culture, it would
appear, must be preserved, not so much because it is valu
able in itself, as it is from the standpoint of humanism,
but because it may contain something practical and useful
for somebody at a future time and place. The literal "group
minds" of Clarke and Sturgeon, the automated libraries of
Clarke, Asimov, and Miller, Asimov's robots, Budrys' matter-
recreating machine, and Miller's Order of Leibowitz all
share this "caretaker” function. So do individuals,
however, such as: Asimov's amateur historian, Lije Baley;
Clarke's Overlords; Sturgeon's psychiatrist; the abbots of
Miller's monastery; A1 Barker, Budrys' caricature of the
"whole man"; and Dr. Edward Sanders, the "anti-hero" of
374
Ballard's novel. Although the individual intellect is
limited in its storage capacity, it is capable of grasping
far more than its personal isolation in time and space; it
can face and deal with changes in its world, however much
they may fill it with fear and anxiety; confronted with
death, even annihilation, it can visualize, and dream of,
and work to bring about immortality. And in each book there
is at least one character who dares to go a little farther
than he knows that others have done: Jan Rodricks, who gets
to see another world, despite the Overlords' restrictions;
Lije Baley, who considers emigration from a stagnant earth
(and eventually overcomes his culture's psychological
restrictions); Gerry and Hip, who strive to find themselves,
and find homo gestalt; Thon Taddeo, Brother Francis, Brother
Kornhoer, and Brother Joshua in A Canticle for Leibowitz;
Barker and Dr. Edward Hawks, each of whom dares death and
the moon in his own way; and a number of Ballard's charac
ters who seem to welcome eternal living death.
Technological hardware, besides providing a thread
of continuity, a bridge from the present into the future,
is used to suggest an equivocal attitude toward the kind of
achievement that it represents. Futuristic and contemporary
machines and devices are featured rather extensively in five
of these books, and parapsychological phenomena function
similarly in the other, seeming to suggest not only the
promise but also the limit of man's inventiveness,
375
ingenuity, and ability to cope with his total environment.
Asimov is the most affirmative of these six authors in his
attitude towards man's achievement, but he makes it clear
that technology creates new problems as well as solving new
ones, and he seems to suggest that human incentive is more
important to technological advance than vice versa. Ballard
is probably the least affirmative toward technology (perhaps
of all science fiction writers, not just these six), but
even he has some use for machines, if only as temporary
means of escape and as geometric figures for ornamentation.
The figure of the scientist, too, is subjected to
some degree of ambivalence in these works. While his
presence, his discoveries, and his explanations help
solidify the author's fictional world, the spokesman for
science is also subjected to critical scrutiny within that
world, and in terms of his relationship to that world.
Clarke's major scientist-figures, the Overlords, have an
advanced material civilization, but they are also paral
lelled in several ways with devils, and visualized as
trapped in their intellect, an evolutionary cul de sac.
The technicians of Asimov's City are unimpressive as
persons, and of the leading spokesmen for the science of
the Spacers, one is a robot and the other almost equally
mechanical in his unemotional, mechanical approach to human
beings and human problems. In Sturgeon's novel, the
psychiatrist is extremely limited in his activity, both
376
"central controls" of the gestalt are crippled (Lone men
tally and Gerry emotionally), and the voice of conscience,
Hip, wins the final struggle less because of his ability to
manipulate than because of his resentment at being manipu
lated. Miller's Thon Taddeo is an honorable man, but as a
scientist he is as amoral as the euthanasia doctor who is
his spiritual successor, while the monks, even those who
have a mixed calling, are all willing to sacrifice science
for religion. Budrys' Hawks is impressive as an inventor
and a technician, but less so as a man and an administrator;
however high his ideals, he is a manipulator, and a danger
ous one, sending men to death and insanity, holding tremen
dous power because of his understanding of things beyond
other men. And Ballard's medical men, however much they may
differ in terms of acceptance or rejection of the crystalli
zation, are rather "ambiguous" and somewhat detached from
that part of their training which we call scientific. Thus
each novelist suggests that we examine his "scientist" both
as a scientist and as a human being; by implication, too,
we are being asked to consider the place and role of science
in our own culture, as well as in the civilizations of the
future.
Unfortunately, perhaps, the author does not offer us
much of a character to examine in such a thorough manner.
The shallowness with which these characters (and others in
the books) are drawn may be partly the result of their
377
diagrammatic roles. Characters who are primarily spokesmen
for a particular, limited point of view, puppets manipulated
to show a specific projection or extrapolation coming true,
or devices enabling the reader to see a world or background
more important to the writer than is the experiencing con
sciousness itself, can hardly aspire to the complexity and
ambiguity of the human condition (itself a literary conven
tion, to some extent) which the great characters of fiction
exhibit. Indeed, where the backgrounds and the science
fictions, in short, the extrapolations, are so important, it
may be that characters should only be one element in the
fictional world, of no preponderant importance, and that the
traditional emphasis on character is out of place. A more
severe criticism is the observation that, when characters in
science fiction are placed in situations where their human
characteristics should be visible, where their reactions
should parallel those of living, breathing persons, they
tend instead to resemble countless other characters of pulp
fiction, indistinguishable from one another in their obtuse
ness, their reliance on physical action, and their utter
lack of imagination. Aside from Miller's characters and
Ballard's protagonist (to some extent), the only characters
in these six books who rise at all above the standard level
of pulp characterization are Clarke's Karellen (an alien),
Asimov's Daneel (a robot), and Sturgeon's Lone (an idiot).
378
A relatively frequent reliance on melodrama and
sentimentality in these novels can also be traced to the
influence of pulp fiction. If the novel is short, as
commercial considerations tend to make most science fiction
novels, if the philosophical content predominates over
considerations of aesthetic form and the action is primarily
a means to maintain reader interest and continuity, as is
usually the case in science fiction, an oversimplification
of human impulse and motivation is not unlikely, and melo
drama and sentimentality may be to an extent the products
of such an oversimplification. But where they are not just
the results of a necessary shorthand method, or where they
are indulged in at some length, a model in conventional
pulp fiction should not be hard to find. The deliberate
withholding of information necessary to a fuller understand
ing of the situation, a traditional gambit of both the
detective story and the horror story, is quite evident in
the novels by Clarke, Asimov, and Sturgeon. The sentimental
value of small children is exploited by Clarke and Sturgeon,
that of young or at least innocent love by Sturgeon and
Budrys, and that of the stereotyped "suburban" family by
Clarke and Asimov. The melodrama of the chase plays a
significant role for Clarke, Asimov, and Ballard, and that
which is implicit in the confrontation of adversaries is
made explicit by Asimov, Sturgeon, Miller, Budrys, and
Ballard. In some cases the author, directly or through one
379
of his characters, tries to rationalize the characters'
behavior, but only in Miller's novel is the behavior or the
rationalization convincing.
In style, too, the influence of pulp fiction is
quite noticeable. Superfluous modifiers, dialogue which
carries an unconscionably large amount of information, a
preponderance of "telling" over "showing," mannerisms of
speech and behavior used not only to identify a character
but practically as a matter of reflex, and numerous other
devices help the pulp writer turn out a maximum of wordage
in a minimum of time. And although science fiction writers,
relative to other commercial authors, may write more for
love and less for money, they are still subject to financial
needs and deadline pressures, they are not likely to receive
meticulous editing as regards style, and they may even
develop a taste for the kind of sloppy writing encouraged by
commercial considerations and conventionally accepted within
the field.
But the problems with style in science fiction go
deeper than mere sloppy habits that higher rates of pay and
more careful editing could reduce or eliminate. There seems
to be a basic fear of style as something debilitating to an
exciting story or idea, or at least an avoidance of style as
something which may be attractive when added on, but which
is strictly unnecessary. The difference between this atti
tude and that of "literary" people has been pointed out by
380
Algis Budrys, in a recent review of an anthology of stories
culled from science fiction's "literary" magazine:
This collection from F&SF contains two kinds of
stories, really, although the standards of writing
are uniform, and high, and the grasp of facts
appears to occupy an acceptably even range no
matter . . . whose story we're considering. One
kind of story is by people who are engaged with
life and use facts to grapple with it and explain
it; people like Delany, Leiber, Aldiss, and Davidson,
for example and for all they do it in strikingly
different ways. Another kind of story is by people
who are engaged in some kind of professional contem
plation, be it as educators, poets, philosophers or
whatever. Those people tend to grapple with words
and other symbols not as tools but as things in
themselves.2
Budrys may be overstating the difference s lightl}^--indeed,
he has just recently acknowledged that "grappling with life"
in science fiction is fairly new--but then in other science
fiction magazines words are taken even more lightly than in
F&SF.3
This attitude of opposition toward style is, I
believe, responsible for a lot of bad writing in science
fiction, and thus acts as a major obstacle to its literary
acceptance. Yet it is based on a misconception, on the
belief that there is a necessary opposition between words
2
Algis Budrys, "Galaxy Bookshelf," Galaxy, October,
1968, p. 169.
3
For all that it has a rather low circulation (see
above, chapter I, note 65), F&SF is the one science fiction
magazine which gets some attention from the literati. See,
for example: C. S. Lewis, "On Science Fiction," Of Other
Worlds (New York, 1966), p. 67; James Yaffe, "The Modern
Trend Toward Meaningful Martians," Saturday Review, April
23, 1960, pp. 22-23.
381
"as tools" and words "as things in themselves" and that the
former is somehow better than the latter. To be sure, the
pace of adventure may be more important to the average
reader of science fiction than is the cadence of the prose,
but that does not necessarily mean that he is totally tone-
deaf. And to more critical readers, the failure of the
style may preclude any interest in the book as a whole.
Furthermore, to say that the aim of the science fiction
writer is the communication of concepts rather than the
communication of style is to beg the question, since a
writer cannot choose not to have a style, of some sort.
Even the barest scientific or technical prose requires a
style of precision and authority, and the avoidance of a
good (i.e., appropriate) style in any context results
inevitably in a bad (i.e., inappropriate) style. And where
the human complexity of the characters is so underplayed,
as it usually is in science fiction, the experience of the
reader could be made more vivid and meaningful by the
presence of a fully aware, experiencing consciousness as
narrator, revealing itself largely in terms of style. The
possibility is largely unexplored, perhaps because science
fiction writers see themselves as technicians, putting
together patterns of ideas and motifs with little regard to
what it all means, perhaps because most people who are
drawn to science fiction are themselves not whole as indi
viduals, and are hence incapable of creating a persona who
382
is fully aware of the implications of his story.^
Of our six writers, Miller seems most in command of
his style and his persona, dignified, reserved, yet wryly
humorous, sympathetic but ironic, and even Miller seems
somewhat self-restricted, involved to an extent in ideas but
not in persons, and not emotionally to any great degree. In
a novel of comparable scope, Clarke exhibits much less self-
assurance and comprehension of the whole, his essentially
flat and even banal style and his inconsistent persona being
countered by the emotional effect of a predominantly elegiac
tone. Sturgeon's book is more tightly woven than either of
these, and unified in part by a consistent tone of wonder
and discovery, which adapts itself chameleon-like to
different characters and situations, but its very intensity
within the limits of language he has set for himself results
in some rather gauche sentimentality and melodrama, and what
is almost a denial of human complexity. Asimov, Ballard,
and Budrys all suffer, to some extent, from the awkward use
in their books of the device of the limited point-of-view,
which Sturgeon uses admirably in the middle section of his
novel. While the limitation to a single consciousness,
slightly amplified beyond the first person narration of
^In surveys aimed at defining the average reader,
"there is nothing to contradict the hypothesis that he is
an intellectualized, somewhat detached individual who has
severely repressed his sexual interests." Ednita P.
Bernabev, "Science Fiction: A New Mythos," The Psycho
analytic Quarterly, XXVI, 4 (1957), 527-535.
383
experience, successfully unifies all three books, the
intellectual and psychological limitations of those
characters are such that their awareness of themselves and
of their environments is far from complete, and the promise
of life and meaning implicit in their situations is not
fulfilled in these novels. The tendency of Lije Baley, a
simple, conventional bureaucrat, to see only the obvious
is captured by Asimov's plain, lucid, sometimes ponderous
style. The quick, nervous, even jumpy style that Budrys
affects is at least partly responsible for the flatness of
his minor characters and the impression that his protagonist
is blind to any but cliched action and behavior. The
ornate, almost langorous style of Ballard coincides with the
dreamy behavior of his "hero," for whom other people are
little more than silhouettes. The characterization result
ing from this restriction may be deliberate, and barely
adequate, but the impression of the fiction as a whole is
badly cramped, except perhaps in the case of Ballard, where
the hero's impressions of phenomena are so obviously more
important than his thoughts about people.
But the pulp tradition has not been merely a debili
tating influence on these authors. The need for clarity and
relative simplicity in commercial markets makes for a
directness of style and impression, unmarred by irrelevan-
cies (if also unmarred by literary niceties). The need for
story eliminates or at least reduces the interminable
384
digressions and lengthy theoretical descriptions which make
so much straight utopian writing all but unreadable. The
sense of adventure and discovery which goes so well with
adolescent psychology and stories of growing up is admirably
suited to a medium which stresses the wonders of the uni
verse and the excitement of scientific discovery, although
it may make any sense of mature emotional involvement
extremely difficult to achieve. The need for scientific
rationalizing tends to anchor one's fantasy, so as not to
let it go too far beyond the bounds of verisimilitude, but
an absolute obeisance to contemporary scientific method,
theory, and knowledge, resulting in thinly disguised propa
ganda for a particular set of values, is not thereby
demanded. The continuity provided by the science fiction
community of fans, editors, and other writers is responsible
not only for a reservoir of motifs and concepts, but also
for a sense of audience, which in turn offers encouragement,
financially as well as emotionally, to a writer interested
in experimenting and developing science fictional ideas.
And the commercial need for compression and word economy
can help a writer develop a sense of craftsmanship, an
ability to work within limits, and a capacity for effective
use of symbolism, suggesting by word and image much that
the average fan's lack of patience with philosophizing and
literary "difficulties" will not allow him fully, and
perhaps laboriously, to develop. In other words, it should
385
be recognized that the style and traditions of pulp science
fiction, although clearly different from those of great
literature, are alive and functional, and even open to
change.
Each of the six authors is clearly conscious of his
audience's taste for the simplicity and obviousness of pulp
fiction conventions and where he takes them beyond the
boundaries of their prejudices is not in the area of style.
Like all good science fiction, and unlike much other popular
art, these books present their readers with something to
think about. Love and death, art and religion, progress and
sterility, as well as the promise and threat of science are
frequently important considerations, even in the worst
science fiction. Although they are often treated in the
abstract, and the thinking is sometimes rather fuzzy, at
least thought is conspicuous by its presence, and there is
usually some attempt at translating the abstractions into
the concrete particularities of fiction.
In these six novels, scientific abstractions and
philosophical ideas, along with archetypal fears and
desires, are given concrete form fairly successfully, in an
attempt to make clear their human meaning, i.e., their
importance for humanity, for Western civilization, for the
individual human characters who inhabit these worlds of
fiction, and to some extent for the individual reader. For
Clarke, for example, God and Satan are reduced to
386
extraterrestrial intelligent beings, utopia comes about only
because justice is administered painlessly from above, and
man is both puny and great from the perspective of the
universe, puny in intellect by comparison with the Over
lords, great in escaping the intellect and joining the
Overmind. And against the background of cataclysmic changes
in man's world and his conception of it, individual men and
women pursue their individual dreams. For Asimov, the
population explosion ends with the City, the space race with
the confederation of the Outer Planets, the advance of
technology with the creation of the perfect robot, and the
clash of cultures and philosophies is shown in the confron
tation between a single man and a single machine, whose
partnership symbolizes a way out of cultural stagnation.
Lije Baley, too, is just an ordinary man, for whom this
fictional world and the changes in it are real and impor
tant for him in terms of his daily activities, his preju
dices, his self-image. The ideal of partnership and
cooperation within the human race as it is now constituted,
and without a complete metamorphosis and loss of identity
as demanded by Clarke's Overmind, is explored by Sturgeon in
terms of parapsychological talents and the overcoming of
personal emotional barriers. The potential for good or
evil in such a superman is really only hinted at in this
novel, which concentrates mainly on the individual loneli
ness and insecurity which must be overcome to achieve
387
community. The traditional paradox of the Tree of Knowl
edge is Miller's theme, given body by spokesmen for various
competing ways of knowledge, of which the scientific way
receives the most vivid and flashy presentation. Other
theological problems are also propounded, inconclusively,
but the protagonists, the abbots and monks of the Order of
Leibowitz, are also pictured as very much in this world,
and having to deal with practical as well as theoretical
knowledge, daily living as well as the vision of eternal
life, and allegiance to an earthly ideal (preservation of
human culture) in fulfillment of a heavenly one (coming to
terms with God). Immortality of the flesh is achieved by
machine in Budrys1 fiction, in a quest which ultimately
seems to reflect man's total involvement with his natural
environment. These two goals are given concrete shape in
the alien artifact on the moon and in Hawks's gigantic
device for transmitting signals and recreating matter, while
the adventure of exploration is balanced on earth by inter
personal episodes revolving around the question of and
quest for personal identity. Finally, Ballard's nonsenti-
ent crystallizing process makes time itself concrete for
his characters whose posturings and melodramatic conflicts,
whose choices of one "living death" over another are funda
mentally irrelevant in the face of slow, but irresistible
time, except insofar as these poses and decisions define
their characters to their own satisfaction.
388
Each of these novels, then, achieves a unique
variation on a number of traditional forms and ideas,
satisfies to some extent the desire for aesthetic form and
balance as well as the desire for eventful action and
adventure, and pays some attention to the need for verisi
militude and an appropriate style, all within the limita
tions of pulp or popular fiction. If none of them is a
masterpiece, none of them is exactly a negligible accom
plishment, either; even the Asimov book is a striking tour
de force, and Miller's novel is a solid literary achieve
ment .
As far as the progress of science fiction in general
is concerned, of course, these six studies are only sugges
tive, not a thorough and complete survey of the field. Such
a study would probably be voluminous, going into much more
depth as regards the science in science fiction, the psycho
logical aspects of fantasy, and the relationship of science
fiction to "popular" literature in general and to the mass
media. It would also have to include numerous other authors
of some importance, historically, intellectually, and
aesthetically. Besides Verne, Wells, and the other authors
of the turn of the century, it would have to cover some
utopian and Gothic fantasy before them and such pioneers in
the pulp field as H. P. Lovecraft, E. E. Smith, John Taine,
and John W. Campbell, Jr. Outside the pulp field since the
389
Twenties, such a project would have to include consideration
of the anti-Utopians and of such recent writers as Gore
Vidal, William Golding, Anthony Burgess, Bernard Wolfe,
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and George R. Stewart. Inside the pulp
field a number of writers come to mind who have written
books roughly as good as the six examined here, including
(in alphabetical order) Brian Aldiss, Alfred Bester, James
Blish, Ray Bradbury, Hal Clement, Samuel Delany, Philip K.
Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, Edgar Pangborn, Cordwainer Smith,
A. E. Van Vogt, John Wyndham, and Roger Zelazny. In addi
tion, it would have to consider contemporary writers in
other countries and languages.
As far as the prospects of science fiction (and
science fiction studies) are concerned, it is possible that
studies such as this one, Alexei Panshin's critical volume
on Heinlein, and to some extent Sam Moskowitz’s series,
will help general and specialized readers to see science
fiction more in terms of individual works and writers, and
less in terms of a conglomerate or corporate image.If,
as I suspect, the science fictional way of seeing (specula
tive, planning, taking science and technology into account
5
Alexei Panshin, Heinlein in Dimension: A Critical
Analysis (Chicago, 1968). Sam Moskowitz, Explorers of the
Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction (Cleveland and New
York, 1963), Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science
Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966), and the companion
anthologies, Masterpieces of Science Fiction (Cleveland and
New York, 1966), and Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction
(Cleveland and New York, 1965).
390
as part of the real world) is gaining, interest in reading
and writing science fiction should increase, thereby-
increasing the remuneration and probably improving the
competition and the criticism.^ Perhaps, as Kingsley Amis
has suggested, "serious writers as yet unborn or still at
school will soon regard science fiction as a natural way of
writing."^ At present, however, there are still significant
obstacles in the way of "great science fiction" being
written. Writers inside the science fiction community are
hampered perhaps by being too close to the body of tradition
to break away, and by being paid too little to allow them
selves the luxury of time in thinking over carefully, feel-
g
ing at length, and rewriting. And writers outside the
pulp field are perhaps too close to the anti-scientific
tradition that C. P. Snow identifies with the subculture of
Concerning literature's acknowledgment of science
and technology, see, for example: Geoffrey Barraclough,
An Introduction to Contemporary History (Baltimore, 1967),
pp. 233-268; Stephen Spender, The Struggle of the Modern
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965), passim.
^From a taped conversation between Amis, Brian
Aldiss, and C. S. Lewis, "Unreal Estates," in C. S. Lewis,
Of Other Worlds (New York, 1966), p. 94.
Q
Regarding the science fiction tradition, James
Blish maintains that most science fiction writers are capa
ble of writing other things, but afraid of it, too:
William Atheling, Jr. [James Blish], The Issue at Hand:
Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction, ed.James
Blish (Chicago, 1964), pp. 121-130. Concerningthe problems
of making a living, see Algis Budrys, "Galaxy Bookshelf,"
Galaxy, December, 1965, p. 151, and June, 1966, p. 148.
391
the "humanists" (although humanism, logically, should
embrace whatever is human, including science), and too
little concerned with scientific accuracy and the logic of
extrapolation. There is also the fact that precious
little great literature is ever written at any one time, a
principle which applies to the main stream as well as to
science fiction. But Amis' suggestion is an interesting
one, posed in a truly science fictional manner.
9
C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific
Revolution (New York, 1959).
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
392
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Prefatory Notes
1. Division. Bibliography A: Primary Works is
subdivided into three categories: I. Works by Authors
Studied; II. Anthologies of Science Fiction Stories Cited
in Text; III. Other Science Fictional Novels, Plays, and
Stories. Bibliography B: Secondary Works Cited in Text is
subdivided into six categories: I. Books and Essays in
Books; II. Magazine Articles; III. Book Reviews of Novels
Studied; IV. Continuing Magazine Features; V. Handbooks
and Bibliographical Guides; VI. Miscellaneous Published and
Unpublished Materials.
2. Comprehensiveness. Even a full accounting of
useful works consulted would require twice as many entries.
To avoid making the bibliographical part of this study too
long and unwieldy, only works cited in the text have been
included, except in two sections. Section I in Bibliography
A includes all known books of fiction written by Clarke,
Asimov, Sturgeon, Miller, Budrys, and Ballard. Section III
in Bibliography A includes at least one work by every author
cited in the text.
3. Abbreviations. Science fiction magazines are
identified, as in the text, by their short names or abbrevi
ations. Astounding stands for Astounding Science Fiction
(March, 1938, through January, i960) and Astounding Science
Fact and Fiction (February, 1960, through September, 1960).
Analog stands for Analog Science Fact and Fiction (October,
i960,through November,1961), Analog Science Fact--Science
Fiction (December, 1961, through March, 1965), and Analog
Science Fiction--Science Fact (April, 1965, through January,
1969). F&SF stands for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction (Winter-Spring, 1950, through January, 1969).
Galaxy "stands for Galaxy Science Fiction (January, 1951,
through September 1958), and Galaxy Magazine (October, 1958,
through January, 1969). IF is also called IF, Worlds of
Science Fiction, although~1Ehe subtitle is not included in
the publishing data at the bottom of the title page (March,
1952, through January, 1969). New Worlds stands for New
Worlds Science Fiction (March, 1953, through April, 1964)
393
394
and New Worlds S F (May, 1964, through December, 1967).
Venture stands for Venture Science Fiction (January, 1957,
through July, 1958).
4. Pseudonyms. With few exceptions, well-known
pseudonyms have been left intact. In the following alpha
betical listing of those pseudonyms known to me, the
author's real name is in parentheses: Anthony Boucher
(William Anthony Parker White), Anthony Burgess (John
Anthony Burgess Wilson), John Christopher (Christopher
Youd), Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs), Edmund Crispin (R. B.
Montgomery), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), H. H. Holmes
(William Anthony Parker White), Murray Leinster (Will F.
Jenkins), George Orwell (Eric Blair), J. H. Rosny aine
(Joseph Henri Honore Boex), Nevil Shute (Nevil Shute
Norway), Cordwainer Smith (Paul A. Linebarger), Fyodor
Sologub (Fedor Kuzmich Teternikov), John Taine (Eric Temple
Bell), William Tenn (Phillip Klass), Mark Twain (Samuel
Langhorne Clemens), John Wyndham (John Beynon Harris).
Edward Hamilton Waldo is the name Theodore Sturgeon was born
with, but the latter is now his legal name, according to
Sam Moskowitz, Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern
Science Fiction (Cleveland and New York, 1966), p. 232.
BIBLIOGRAPHY A: PRIMARY WORKS
I. Works by Authors Studied
Listing for each author includes all books of
fiction published through December 31, 1968, arranged
according to date of first appearance in book form. Date
of novels' prior magazine appearance given in parentheses
unless both dates are the same. Magazine pieces cited
above in text, including original appearance of the specific
novels analyzed, listed according to date of first publica
tion .
a. Arthur C. Clarke (chapter III)
1950 "Guardian Angel," Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April,
pp. 98ff. Also in New Worlds, Winter, pp. 2ff.
1951 Prelude to Space. New York.
Sands of Mars. New York.
1952 Islands in the Sky (juvenile). New York.
1953 Against the Fall of Night (1948). New York.
Childhood's EricT! New York.
Expedition to "Earth (stories). New York.
1955 Earthlight (1951). New York.
1956 The City and the Stars (revision of Against the Fall
of Night). New York.
Reach for Tomorrow (stories). New York.
1957 The Deep Range. New York.
Tales from the White Hart (stories). New York.
1958 The Other Side of the Sky (stories). New York.
1959 Across the Sea of Stars (omnibus, including ChiId-
hood *s End--edition cited above in text--,
Earthlight, and 18 stories from previous collec-
tions). New York.
1961 A Fal1 of Moondust. New York.
From the Ocean, From the Stars (omnibus, including The
City and the Stars, The Deep Range, and all 24
stories from The Other Side of the Sky).
New York.
1962
1963
1964
1968
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
396
Tales of Ten Worlds (stories). New York.
Dolphin Island (juvenile). New York.
Glide Path (non-science fiction). New York.
Prelude to Mars (omnibus, including Prelude to Space,
Sands of Mars, and 16 stories from previous
collections). New York.
2001: A Space Odyssey. New York.
b. Isaac Asimov (chapter IV)
I, Robot (stories). New York.
Pebble in the Sky. Garden City.
Foundation (1942-45). New York.
The Stars, Like Dust. Garden City.
The Currents of Space. Garden City.
David Starr: Space "Ranger (juvenile, published under
pseudonym of "Paul French"). Garden City.
Foundation and Empire (1945-46). New York.
"The Caves of Steel," Galaxy, October, pp. 4-66;
November, pp. 98-159; December, pp. 108-159.
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (juve-
nile, published under pseudonym of "Paul French").
Garden City.
Second Foundation (1948-49). New York.
The Caves of Steel. Garden City.
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (juvenile, pub-
lished under pseudonym of "Paul French"). Garden
City.
The End of Eternity. Garden City.
The Martian Way and Other Stories. Garden City.
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (juvenile,
published under pseudonym of "Paul French").
Garden City.
Earth is Room Enough (stories). Garden City.
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (juvenile,
published under pseudonym of "Paul French").
Garden City.
The Naked Sun (1956). Garden City.
397
1958 The Death Dealers (non-science fiction). New York.
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (juvenile,
published under pseudonym of "Paul French").
Garden City.
1959 Nine Tomorrows (stories). Garden City.
1964 The Rest of the Robots (omnibus, including The Caves
of Steel--edition cited above in text--, The
Naked Sun, and 8 stories not contained in previ-
ous collections). Garden City.
1966 Fantastic Voyage. New York.
The Foundation Trilogy (omnibus, including Foundation,
Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation).
Garden City.
1967 Asimov1s Mysteries (stories, some non-science
fiction)T Garden City.
Through a Glass, Clearly (stories). London.
c. Theodore Sturgeon (chapter V)
1948 Without Sorcery (stories). New York.
1950 The Dreaming Jewels. New York.
1952 "Baby is Three," Galaxy, October, pp. 4-62.
1953 E Pluribus Unicorn (stories). New York.
More than Human (edition cited above in text).
New York.
1955 A Way Home (stories). New York.
Caviar (stories). New York.
1956 I, Libertine (non-science fiction, published under
pseudonym of "Frederick R. Ewing"). New York.
1958 The Cosmic Rape. New York.
A Touch of Strange (stories). New York.
1959 Aliens Four (stories). New York.
1960 Beyond (stories). New York.
Venus Plus X. New York.
1961 Some of Your Blood. New York.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. New York.
1964 Sturgeon in Orbit (stories). New York.
1966 Starshine (stories). New York.
398
1955
1956
1957
1960
1962
1964
1954
1955
1956
1958
1960
1961
1962
1967
d. Walter M. Miller, Jr. (chapter VI)
MA Canticle for Leibowitz," F&SF, April, pp. 93-111.
"The Darfsteller," Astounding, January, pp. 10-65.
"And the Light is Risen," F&SF, August, pp. 3-80.
"The Last Canticle," F&SF, February, pp. 3-50.
A Canticle for Leibowitz (edition cited above in
text). Philadelphia.
Conditionally Human (stories). New York.
The View from the Stars (stories). New York.
e. Algis Budrys (chapter VII)
False Night. New York.
"Citadel," Astounding, February, pp. 70-92.
"The Executioner," Astounding, January, pp. 8-38.
Man of Earth (1956). New York.
Who? New York.
"Rogue Moon," F&SF, December, pp. 5-38, 78-125.
Rogue Moon (edition cited above in text). Greenwich,
Connecticut.
The Unexpected Dimension (stories). New York.
Some Will Not Die (revision of False Night).
Evanston, Illinois.
Budrys1 Inferno (stories). New York.
The Falling Torch (1958-59). New York.
The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn (1966-67). Greenwich,
Connecticut.
399
f. J. G. Ballard (chapter VIII)
1962 Billennium (stories). New York.
The Drowned World. New York.
The Voices of Time (stories). New York.
The Wind from Nowhere. New York.
1963 Passport to Eternity (stories). New York.
1964 The Burning World. New York.
"The Illuminated Man,” F&SF, May, pp. 5-31.
Terminal Beach (stories^ New York.
The Terminal Beach (stories). London.
1966 "The Assassination Weapon," New Worlds, April,
pp. 4-12.
The Crystal World (edition cited above in text).
New York.
The Impossible Man (stories). New York.
1967 "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D," F&SF, December,
pp. 113-127.
II. Anthologies of Science Fiction Stories
Cited in Text
Alphabetical listing by editors, including all
anthologies cited above in text. Anthologies appearing
in series are grouped together as a single item.
Asimov, Isaac, ed. The Hugo Winners. New York, 1962.
Bleiler, Everett, and Dikty, T. E., eds. The Best Science-
Fiction Stories : 1949 through --19541 6 vols.
New York, 1949-1954.
Crispin, Edmund, ed. Best S F through Best S F Five:
Science Fiction Stories. 5 vols. London, 1955, 1956,
1958, 1961, 1964. “
Franklin, H. Bruce. Future Perfect; American Science
Fiction of the Nineteenth Century. New York, 1^66.
Healy, Raymond J., and McComas, J. Francis, eds.
Adventures in Time and Space. New York, 1946.
400
Merril, Judith, ed. S F: The Year's Greatest Science-
Fiction and Fantasy through Fourth Annual Edition,
changed to The Year's Best S-F, Fifth through Eleventh
Annual Editions, changed to S F 12, 12 vols.
New York, 1956-1966, 1968.
Moorcock, Michael, ed. Best S. F. Stories from "New
Worlds .1 1 London, 1967 ,
Moskowitz, Sam, ed. Masterpieces of Science Fiction.
Cleveland and New York, 1966.
Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction.
Cleveland and New York, 1965.
___________ Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and
Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines,
1891-1911. Cleveland and New York, 1968.
The "Playboy" Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Chicago
The "Post" Reader of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Garden
City, 1964.
Pratt, Fletcher, ed. World of Wonder. New York, 1951.
Tenn, William, ed. Children of Wonder. New York, 1953.
III. Other Science Fictional Novels,
Plays, and Stories
Alphabetical listing of authors referred to in text
including at least one work representative of his science
fictional or utopian writing. Place and date given indi
cate edition available. Unless otherwise indicated, one
date in parentheses indicates first publication in book
form; a second date indicates earlier magazine publication.
Aldiss, Brian. Graybeard. New York, 1965 (1964).
The Long Afternoon of Earth (story-cycle).
New York, 1962 (1961).
_________ . Starship. New York, 1960 (1958).
Andrae, Johann Valentin. Christianopolis, trans. Felix
Emil Held. New York, 1916 (16l9).
401
Bacon, Francis. "New Atlantis," Essays and New Atlantis.
New York, 1942 (1627).
Balzac, Honore de. Le Medecin de campagne, in v. 13 of
Oeuvres completes, ed. Jean A. Ducourneau. Paris, 1965
("1833)."--- -----
_________ . La Recherche de l'absolu, in v. 14 of Oeuvres
completes, ed. Jean A. Ducourneau. Paris, 1965 (1834).
Bellamy, Edward. The Blindman's World and Other Stories.
Boston, 1898.
_________ . Doctor Heidenhoff’s Process. New York, 1880.
_________ . Equality. Toronto, 1897.
Looking Backward: 2000-1887. New York, 1962
C i m y . ----------------------------------
Bester, Alfred. The Demolished Man. Chicago, 1953.
. The Stars My Destination. New York, 1956.
Blish, James. A Case of Conscience. London, 1960 (1958).
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. London, 1954.
The Martian Chronicles (story-cycle). Garden
City, 195tf:
Briussov, Valeriy. "The Republic of the Southern Cross,"
The Republic of the Southern Cross and Other Stories,
trans. unknown. New York, 1919 (before 1908, date of
German translation).
Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland. New York, 1926 (1798).
Brown, Fredric. The Lights in the Sky are Stars.
New York, 1953"!
_________ . What Mad Universe. Chicago, 1948.
Bulgakov, Mikhail. "The Fatal Eggs," The Fatal Eggs:
Soviet Satire, trans. Mirra Gins burg- ! New York, 1965
x v m ): ------ -
_________ . The Heart of a Dog, trans. Michael Glenny.
New York, 1968 (written 1925).
Bulgakov, Mikhail. The Master and Margarita, trans. Mirra
Ginsburg. New York, 1967 (written 1925-1940).
402
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. London, 1964 (1962).
______ . The Wanting Seed. London, 1965 (1962) .
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars. New York. 1963
(1917; 1912).
Butler, Samuel. Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited. London and
New York, 1962 (1872 and 1901).
Caidin, Martin. Marooned. New York, 1965 (1964)
Campanella, Tommasso. City of the Sun, trans. unknown, in
Famous Utopias, ed. unknown, introduction by Charles B.
Andrews. New York, n.d. (1637; written 1623).
Campbell, John W., Jr. Who Goes There? and Other Stories.
Chicago, 1955.
Capek, Karel. The Absolute at Large, trans. unknown.
New York, 1927.
Krakatit, trans. Lawrence Hyde. London, 1925
— r r m j . ----------
____. R. U. R. , trans. Paul Selver, in R. U. R. and
the Insect Play, by the Brothers Capek. London, New
York, and Toronto, 1964 (1921).
_________ . War with the Newts, trans. M. and R.
WeatheralTT New York, 1964 (1936).
Christopher, John. No Blade of Grass. New York, 1967
(1956).
Clement, Hal. Mission of Gravity. Garden City, 1954.
Collier, John. Fancies and Goodnights (stories). New York,
1961 (1951).
Cummings, Ray. The Girl in the Golden Atom. New York,
1923 (original magazine publication, T9*19).
Cyrano de Bergerac, Saavinien. Histoire comique des etats
et empires de la lune et du soleil, ed. P. L. Jacob
LPaul Lacroix J. Paris, 1858 (1650, 1656).
Davidson, Avram. Or All the Seas with Oysters (stories).
New York, 1962.
DeCamp, L. Sprague. Lest Darkness Fall. New York, 1941
(1939).
Delany, Samuel R. Babel-17. New York, 1966.
_________ . The Ballad of Beta-II. New York, 1965.
The Einstein Intersection. New York, 1967.
Nova. Garden City, 1968.
del Rey, Lester. Nerves. New York, 1956.
Dennis, Nigel. Cards of Identity. New York, 1960 (1955).
Dick, Philip K. Eye in the Sky. New York, 1957.
The Man in the High Castle. New York, 1964
— (m2).
. Solar Lottery. New York, 1955.
________ . The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. Garden
CTt^T-1965T
Doblin, Alexander. Berg, Meere, und Giganten. Berlin,
1924.
_____ . Giganten (revision of Berg, Meere, -und
Giganten). Berim, 1932.
Dominik, Hans. Atomgewicht 500. Berlin, 1935.
_________ . Das Erbe der Uraniden. Berlin, 1928.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Complete Professor Challenger
Stories (omnibus, including The Lost World, The Poison
Belt, The Land of Mist, "The Disintegration Machine,"
and "When the World Screamed.") London, 1963 (1912,
1913, 1926, 1928, 1929).
Eliot, George. Middlemarch, ed. Gordon S. Haight.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1956 (1871-72).
Ely, David. Seconds. New York, 1964 (1963).
Farmer, Philip Jose. The Alley God (stories). New York,
1959.
_________ . The Lovers. New York, 1962 (1959).
_________ . Strange Relations (stories). New York, 1960.
Fast, Howard. The Edge of Tomorrow (stories). New York,
1961.
404
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, ed. Christian Gauss.
New York, 1958 (1857).
Forster, E. M. "The Machine Stops," Collected Short
Stories of E. M. Forster. London” 1965 (1909).
Frank, Pat. Alas, Babylon. New York, 1960 (1959).
_________ . Forbidden Area. Philadelphia, 1956.
_________ . Mr. Adam. Philadelphia and New York, 1946.
Gail, Otto Willi. Per Schuss ins All. Breslau, 1925.
_________ . "The Shot into Infinity," trans. Francis
Currier, Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall, 1929, pp. 6ff.
Per Stein vom Mond. Breslau, 1926.
_________ . "The Stone from the Moon," trans. Francis
Currier, Wonder Stories Quarterly, March, 1930,
pp. 294ff"!
Gernsback, Hugo. Ralph 124C 41+, 2nd ed. New York, 1958
(1925; 1911).
Gillon, Piana and Meir. The Unsleep. New York, 1962
(1961).
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, parts one and two,
ed. Erich Trunz. Hamburg, 1963.
Golding, William. The Brass Butterfly (play). London,
1958.
_________ . "Envoy Extraordinary," in Sometime, Never:
Three Tales of Imagination by William Golding, John
Wyndham, Mervyn Peake. New York, 1957.
_________ . The Inheritors. New York, 1963 (1955).
_________ . Lord of the Flies. New York, 1964 (1954).
Graves, Robert. Watch the Northwind Rise. New York, 1949.
Hamilton, Edmond. Captain Future series. 15 of 17 novels
in Captain Future magazine, 1941-1944; 4 stories and 2
of 3 novels in Startling Stories, 1945-1950.
Hanstein, Otfrid von. "Between Earth and Moon," trans.
Francis Currier, Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall, 1930,
pp. 6ff.
405
Hanstein, Otfrid von. Elektropolis. Stuttgart, 1927.
_______ . "Electropolis," trans. Francis Currier, Wonder
Stories Quarterly, Summer, 1930, pp. 482ff.
______. Mond-Rack 1. Stuttgart, 1929.
Harbou, Thea von. Die Frau im Mond. Berlin, 1928.
__________ . Metropolis. Berlin, 1926.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Birthmark," "The Artist of the
Beautiful," "Rappacini's Daughter," in Future Perfect:
American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century,
ed. H. Bruce Franklin'. New York, 1966 (1843, 1844,
1844).
Heinlein, Robert A. The Man Who Sold the Moon (stories).
New York, 1963 (1950).
_________ . The Past Through Tomorrow: "Future History"
Stories. New York, 1967.
_________ . Starship Troopers. New York, 1961 (1959).
_________ . Stranger in a Strange Land. New York, 1961.
Herbert, Frank. Dune. Philadelphia and New York, 1965.
Hersey, John. The Child Buyer. New York, 1961 (1960).
_________ . White Lotus. New York, 1966 (1965).
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Elsie Venner. New York, 1961
(1861).
The Guardian Angel. Boston and New York, 1892
( m r y . ----------------
A Mortal Antipathy. Boston and New York, 1892
(Tsssy.--------—
Homer. Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald. Garden City,
1963'' ( I ^ ' originally composed ca. 7th-8th centuries
B.C.).
Hudson, W. H. A Crystal Age. London, 1929 (1887).
Huxley, Aldous. After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.
New York, 1965 (1939).
_________ . Ape and Essence. New York, 1968 (1948).
406
Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York, 1962 (1932).
_________ . Island. New York, 1962.
Jackson, Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House. New York,
1962 (1959).
Jiinger, Ernst. Glaserne Bienen. Stuttgart, 1957.
_________ . Heliopolis. Tubingen, 1949.
Kellermann, Bernhard. Der Tunnel. Frankfurt a. M., 1952
(1913).
Kline, Otis Adalbert. The Outlaws of Mars. New York, 1961
(magazine version, 1933).
Kornbluth, C. M. Not This August. Garden City, 1955.
_________ . The Syndic. Garden City, 1953.
Kuttner, Henry. Bypass to Otherness (stories). New York,
1961.
_________ . Return to Otherness (stories). New York, 1962.
_________ , and Moore, C. L. No Boundaries (stories).
New York, 1955.
Lasswitz, Kurd. Auf Zwei Planeten. Leipzig, 1897.
Nie und Immer (stories). 2 vols. Leipzig,
m J T — ----------------
Leiber, Fritz. The Big Time. New York, 1961.
_________ . Gather, Darkness. New York, 1950.
_________ . The Wanderer. New York, 1964.
Leinster, Murray. Colonial Survey (stories). New York,
1956.
Lewis, C. S. Out of the Silent Planet. New York, 1962
(1938).
_________ . Perelandra. New York, 1962 (1943).
_________ . That Hideous Strength. New York, 1962 (1945).
Lewis, Matthew G. The Monk, ed. Louis F. Peck. New York,
1959 (1796).
407
Lewis, Percy Wyndham. The Childermass, Section I.
London, 1928.
____ . The Human Age: Book Two, Monstre Gai; Book
Three, Malign Fiesta. London, 1955.
London, Jack. The Iron Heel. Chicago and New York, 1913
(1907).
Lovecraft, H. P. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
New York, 1965 (1952; 1941).
"The Colour Out of Space" and "The Shadow Out
of Time," in The Outsider and Others (stories), ed.
August Derleth and Donald Wandrei! Sauk City,
Wisconsin, 1939 (original magazine publications, 1927,
1936).
Lucian of Samosata. "A True Story," Selected Satires of
Lucian, ed. and trans. Lionel Casson. Garden City,
1962 “(originally written 2nd century A.D.).
MacDonald, John D. Ballroom of the Skies. Greenwich,
Connecticut, 1968 (1952).
_________ . The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything.
Greenwic.h, Connecticut, 1965 (1962) .
Wine of the Dreamers. Greenwich, Connecticut,
1988 '(195rr
Maurois, Andre. Le Chapitre suivant. Paris, 1927.
_________ . La Machine £ lire les pensees. Paris, 1937.
_________ . Le Peseur d>ames. Paris, 1931.
_________ . Voyage au pays des Articoles. Paris, 1928.
Melville, Herman. "The Bell-Tower," in Future Perfect:
American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century,
ed. H. Bruce Franklin. New York, 1966 (1855).
_________ . Moby-Dick. New York, 1961 (1851).
Mercier, Sebastien. L'An deux mille quatre cent quarante;
r£ve s'il fdt jamais. London, 1775 (1770).
Merritt, A. The Moon Pool. New York, 1966 (original
magazine version, 1919).
408
Merritt, A. The Ship of Ishtar. New York, 1966 (original
magazine version, 1924).
Meyrink, Gustave. Per Golem. Leipzig and Berlin, 1915.
Miller, Warren. Looking for the General. New York, 1964.
_________ . The Siege of Harlem. New York, 1965 (1964).
Moore, C. L. Judgment Night. New York, 1965 (1952; 1943).
Moore, Ward. Bring the Jubilee. New York, 1953 (1952).
More, Thomas. Utopia, trans. unknown, ed. Edward Surtz.
New Haven and London, 1964.
Morris, William. News from Nowhere. Chicago, n.d. (1890).
Orwell, George. 1984. New York, 1949.
Pangborn, Edgar. Davy. New York, 1964.
______ . The Judgment of Eve. New York, 1966.
A Mirror for Observers. Garden City, 1954.
________ . West of the Sun. Garden City, 1953,
Plato. Republic, "Timaeus," and "Critias," in v. 3 of The
Dialogues of Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowett. London,
1931 (originally written 4th century B.C.).
Poe, Edgar Allan. "Descent into the Maelstrom," "The Facts
in the Case of M. Valdemar," "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue," "The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym," "The
Mystery of Marie Roget," "The Purloined Letter," and "A
Tale of the Ragged Mountains," The Complete Tales and
Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York, 1938 (1841, 1845,
T84T7 'IH-377 m 27 18447 1844).
_________ . "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "A
Tale of the Ragged Mountains" also in Future Perfect:
American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century,
ed. H. Bruce Franklin. New York, 1966.
Pohl, Frederik. Alternating Currents (stories). New York,
1956.
The Case Against Tomorrow (stories). New York,
19567“ --------------
_________ . Tomorrow Times 7 (stories). New York, 1959.
409
Pohl, Frederik, and Kornbluth, C. M. The Space Merchants.
New York, 1960 (1953).
Rand, Ayn. Anthem. New York, 1961 (1946).
_________ . At1as Shrugged. New York, 1960 (1957).
Rosny, J. H., aine. Eyrimah. Paris, 1895.
_________ . Le Felin geant. Paris, 1920.
_________ . La Force mysterieuse. Paris, 1914.
_________ . La Guerre de feu. Paris, 1911.
_________ . La Mort de la terre. Paris, 1912.
_________ . Vamireh. Paris, 1892.
Russell, Eric Frank. Dreadful Sanctuary. New York, 1963
(1951; 1948).
Dreadful Sanctuary, rev. ed. London, 1967
- c r 9 - 5 3 ) ' ----------------------------------------------------------------
_________ . Sentinels from Space. New York, 1960 (1951).
Scheerbart, Paul. Astrale Noveletten (stories). Munich,
1912.
_________ . Die grosse Revolution: Ein Mondroman.
Leipzig, 190ZT
Lesabdndio: Ein Asteroiden-Roman. Munich,
m T - ...............................
_________ . Das Perpetuum Mobile: Die Geschichte einer
Erfindung" Leipzig, 1909.
Shaw, Bernard. Back to Methusaleh (play). Baltimore, 1961
(1921).
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus.
New York, n.d.”(m7)“-------
_________ . The Last Man. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1965 (1826).
Shute, Nevil. On the Beach. New York, 1960 (1957).
Simak, Clifford. City (story-cycle). New York, 1952.
_________ . Way Station. New York, 1964 (1963).
410
Siodma.k, Kurt. Donovan's Brain. New York, 1961 (1942).
Die Macht im Dunkeln. Zurich and Leipzig,
1937.
_. Rache im Ather. Berlin, 1932.
Skinner, B. F. Walden Two. New York, 1966 (1948).
Smith, Cordwainer. You Will Never Be the Same (story-
cycle). Evanston^ Illinois, 1963.
Smith, E. E. Children of the Lens. New York, 1966 (1954;
1947-48).
______________. First Lensman. New York, 1964 (1950).
Galactic Patrol. New York, 1966 (1950;
B T r _T8) _------------------
_________ . Gray Lensmen. New York, 1965 (1951; 1939-40).
Second Stage Lensmen. New York, 1965 (1953;
1941-42).
_. Skylark Duquesne. New York, 1966 (1965).
The Skylark of Space. New York, 1966 (1946;
1J m j- ------- ----------------
Skylark of Valeron. New York, 1963 (1949;
r m _T5) ^ --------------------
_________ . Skylark Three. New York, 1963 (1948; 1930).
_________ . Triplanetary. New York, 1965 (1948; 1934).
Sologub, Fyodor. The Created Legend, v. 1 trans. John
Cournos. New York, 1916 (trilogy, original publication
in 5 parts: 3 parts in Russian, 1907-11; 2 parts in
German, 1912-13).
Stapledon, W. Olaf. Last and First Men. Harmondsworth,
England, 1963 (19707:
_________ . Odd John. New York, 1965 (1935).
_________ . Sirius. Harmondsworth, England, 1964 (1944).
_________ . Star Maker. New York, 1961 (1937).
Stewart, George R. Earth Abides. New York, 1949.
411
Swift, Johnathan. Gulliver's Travels, in The Portable
Swift, ed. Carl Van Doren. New York, i960 (1948;
original publication, 1726).
Taine, John. Before the Dawn. New York, 1934.
Seeds of Life and White Lily. New York, 1966
(1931; 1931 and 1934;”1930).
Tolkien, J. R. R. Lord of the Rings. 3 vols. New York,
1965 (1955).
Tolstoi, Alexei. Aelita, trans. Lucy Flaxman. Moscow,
n.d. (1922).
The Garin Death-Ray, trans. George Hanna.
Moscow, 1955 (1927).
Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Sons, ed. and trans. Ralph E.
Matlaw. New York, 1966 (1862).
Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.
New York, 1949 (1889).
Van Vogt, A. E. Triad (omnibus, including Sian, The World
of Null-A, and The' Voyage of the Space BeagleJ!
New York, n.d. (1940, 1945, 1950).
Verne, Jules. De la terre A la lune. Paris, 1945 (1865).
. The Sphinx of the Ice-Fields, trans. unknown,
in Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne, The Mystery of
Arthur Gordon Pym, ed. Basil Ashmore"! London, 1964
(i960; original French publication, 1897).
Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. Paris, 1871
(w o - ). —- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Voyage au centre de la terre. Paris, 1945
(TS05J. -------- --------------
Vidal, Gore. Messiah. New York, 1954.
Visit to a Small Planet (play). New York,
B 5 6 - ----------------------------
Villiers de l'lsle-Adam. L'Eve future. Paris, 1887.
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. Cat's Cradle. Harmondsworth, England,
1965 (1963).
_________ . Player Piano. London, 1954 (1953).
412
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. The Sirens of Titan. New York, 1959.
Waugh, Evelyn. Love Among the Ruins. New York, 1952.
Wells, H. G. A Modern Utopia. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1967
(1905).
_________ . The Time Machine, in Seven Science Fiction
Novels of H. G. Wells"] New York, 1951 (1895; 1888) .
Werfel, Franz. Stern der Ungeboren. Frankfurt a. M., 1946.
Wibberley, Leonard. The Mouse on the Moon. New York, 1963
(1962).
_________ . The Mouse that Roared. New York, 1959 (1955).
Williamson, Jack. The Humanoids. New York, 1963 (1949).
Wilson, Angus. The Old Men at the Zoo. Harmondsworth,
England, 1964 (1961).
Wolfe, Bernard. Limbo. New York, 1952.
Wyndham, John. The John Wyndham Omnibus (including The Day
of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes Loriginally titled
Out of the Deep's in U.S.A. | , and The Chrysalids [orig-
inally titled Re-Birth in U.S.A.]- ! New York, T964
(1951, 1953, 135TT
Zamiatin, Eugene. We, trans. Gregory Zilboorg. New York,
1959 (1924).
Zelazny, Roger. This Immortal. New York, 1966.
Zola, Emile. Le Docteur Pascal, in v. 6 of Oeuvres
completes, ed. Henri Mitterand. Lausanne, 1968 (1893).
413
BIBLIOGRAPHY B: SECONDARY WORKS
I. Books, and Essays in Books
Alphabetical listing by authors, except for anthol
ogies or collections of essays listed by editor or first
author on title page. Single essays in collections or
anthologies otherwise not directly relevant to this study
are listed by author. Anthologies of science fiction
stories with critical comment and/or apparatus may be found
in Bibliography A: Primary Works, section II: Anthologies.
Alberds, R.-M. "Merveilleux et fantastique: de la feerie
d la ‘fiction scientifique,'" chapter XXI, Histoire du
roman moderne. Paris, 1962.
Allott, Kenneth. Jules Verne. New York, 1967.
Amis, Kingsley. New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science
Fiction. London, 1961.
Anderson, Bernhard. Understanding the Old Testament.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1957.
Asimov, Isaac. Is Anyone There? Garden City, 1967.
Atheling, William, Jr. [James Blish]. The Issue at Hand:
Studies in Contemporary Magazine Science Fiction^
ed. James Blish. Chicago, 1964.
Auden, W. H. "The Guilty Vicarage," pp. 146-158 in The
Dyer's Hand. New York, 1962.
Bailey, J. 0. Pilgrims Through Space and Time: Trends and
Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction. New York,
t w t . ------------------ ------------------------
Bamberger, Bernard J. Fallen Angels. Philadelphia, 1952.
Barraclough, Geoffrey. An Introduction to Contemporary
History. Baltimore, 1967.
Barzun, Jacques. Classic, Romantic and Modern, rev. ed.
Garden City, 1961.
Bergier, Jacques. "La science-fiction," in Histoire des
litteratures, ed. Raymond Queneau, Encyclopedie de la
Pleiade, III. Paris, 1958.
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Informed Heart: Autonomy in a Mass
Age. Glencoe, Illinois, I960.
414
Bloch, Robert. The Eighth Stage of Fandom: Selections from
25 Years of Fan Writing, ed. Earl Kemp. Chicago, 1962^
Boisdeffre, Pierre de. "La 1Science-Fiction,’" pp. 439-440
in Une Histoire vivante de la litterature d'auiourd'hui
(1938-1958). Paris, 1958.
Bowman, Sylvia E., et al. Edward Bellamy Abroad: An
American Prophets Influence. New York, 1962.
Bretnor, Reginald, ed. Modern Science Fiction: Its Mean
ing and Its Future. New York, 1953.
Bridenne, Jean-Jacques. La Litterature franqaise d'imagina
tion scientifique. Dassonville, 1950-51.
Brunetidre, Ferdinand. Le Roman naturaliste, rev. ed.
Paris, 1892.
Buck, Philo M. The World's Great Age. New York, 1930.
Butler, E[liza] M[arian]. The Myth of the Magus.
Cambridge, England, and New York, 1948.
Campbell, John W. Collected Editorials from "Analog,"
ed. Harry Harrison. Garden City, 1966.
_______ . "The Value of Science Fiction," in Science
Marches On, ed. James Stokley. New York, 1951.
Clarke, Arthur C. Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into
the Limits of the Possible" New York, Toronto, and
London, 1965.
_________ . Voices from the Sky: Previews of the Coming
Space Age" New~York7~T$GTT
Davenport, Basil. Inquiry into Science Fiction. New York,
London, and Toronto, 1955.
______, et al. The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination
and Social Criticism, 2nd ed. Chicago, 1964.
Dedeyan, Charles. Le Th&me de Faust dans la litterature
europeene. 4 vols . Paris , 1954-62~!
Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy. New York, 1953.
Elmgren, John. Gestalt Psychology: A Survey and Some
Contributions’ ! Goteborgs Hogskoles Arsskrift, 44.
Goteborg, 1938.
415
Eschbach, Lloyd Arthur, ed. Of Worlds Beyond: The Science
of Science Fiction Writing~! Reading, Pennsylvania,
T947; reprinted Chicago, 1964.
Eurich, Nell. Science in Utopia: A Mighty Design.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967.
Evans, I. 0. "introduction," The Sphinx of the Ice-Fields,
trans. unknown, in Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne,
The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym, ed. Basil Ashmore.
London, 1964.
Fabun, Don. The Dynamics of Change. Englewood Cliffs,
New Jerseyj 1967.
Fath, Robert. L'influence de la science sur la litterature
frantaise dans la seconde moltie du 19e si£cle (le
roman, la poesie, le theatre, la critique). Diss.
Laus anne, 1901.
Fiedler, Leslie A. Love and Death in the American Novel.
New York, 1960.
Foreign Policy Association, eds. Toward the Year 2018.
New York, 1968.
Friedman, Norman. "Forms of the Plot," pp. 223-258 in The
Theory of the Novel, ed. Philip Stevick. New York,
1967. --------
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, 1957.
Gaer, Joseph. The Legend of the Wandering Jew. New York,
1961.
Garmon, Maurice, and Vinchon, Jean. The Devil: An Histor
ical, Critical and Medical Study, trans. Stephen Haden
Guest. London, 1929.
Gardner, Martin. Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.
New York, 1957.
Gerber, Richard. Utopian Fantasy. London, 1955.
Goneourt, Edmond and Jules de. The Goncourt Journals 1851-
1870, ed. and trans. Lewis Galantidre. Garden City,
Gove, Philip Babcock, ed. Webster's Third New International
Dictionary. Springfield, Massachusetts, 1961.
416
Green, Martin. Science and the Shabby Curate of Poetry.
New York, 1965.
Green, Roger Lancelyn. Into Other Worlds: Space-Flight in
Fiction, from Lucian~~to Lewis. London, 1958.
Gurwitsch, Aron. The Field of Consciousness. Duquesne
Studies, Psychological Series, 2. Pittsburgh, 1964.
Hansel, C. W. M. ESP: A Scientific Evaluation. New York,
1966.
Haycraft, Howard. Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times
of the Detective Story. New York and London, 1941^
Hayek, F. A. The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies
in the Abuse of Reason. Glencoe, Illinois, 1952.
Henkin, Leo J. Darwinism in the English Novel 1860-1910:
The Impact 6Y Evolution on Victorian Fiction. New York,
T55U.
Herbruggen, Hubertus Schulte. Utopie und Anti-Utopie: Von
der Strukturanalyse zur Strukturtypologie" Beitrage zur
Englischen Philologie, 43 , Bochum-Langendre'er, 19o0.
Highet, Gilbert. "Perchance to Dream," pp. 3-10 in A Clerk
of Oxenford. New York, 1954.
____. "From World to World," pp. 130-137 in People,
Places, and Books. New York, 1953.
Hillegas, Mark R. The Future as Nightmare: H. G. Wells
and the Anti-Utopians. New York, 1967.
Holland, Norman N. The Dynamics of Literary Response.
New York, 1968.
Hughes, Pennethorne. Witchcraft. Baltimore, 1967.
Isaacs, Alan. The Survival of God in the Scientific Age.
Baltimore, 1966.
Jones, Ernest. Nightmare, Witches, and Devils. New York,
[1931].
Jung, C. G. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen
in the Sky, trans. R. F. C. Hull. New York, 1959.
Kahn, Herman. On Thermonuclear War. Princeton, 1961.
417
Kahn, Herman. Thinking About the Unthinkable. New York,
1962.
_________ , and Wiener, Anthony J. The Year 2000 ; A Frame-
work for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years.
New York, 1967.
Knight, Damon. In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern
Science Fiction, 2nd ed. Chicago, 1967.
Koestler, Arthur. "The Boredom of Fantasy," pp. 142-147 in
The Trail of the Dinosaur and Other Essays. New York,
T$55~.
Krysmanski, Hans-Jurgen. Die utopische Methode. Dortmunder
Schriften zur Sozialforschung, 21. Koln and Opladen,
T W T .
Lampa, Anton. Das naturwissenschaftliche Marchen.
Reichenberg" 1919.
Lewis, C. S. An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge,
Eng1and, 1965.
_________ . Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories.
New York, 1966.
Lindner, Robert. "The Jet-Propelled Couch," in The Fifty-
Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales.
New York, 1961.
Martino, P. Le Naturalisme franqais (1870-1895). Paris,
1923.
Matthey, H[ubert]. Essai sur le merveilleux dans la litter
ature fran^aise depuis l800: contribution a I1etude des
genres I Dxss. Lausanne, 1915.
Messac, Regis. La "detective novel" et 1'influence de la
pensee scientifique. BibliothSque de la Revue de
Latterature Comparee, 59. Paris, 1929.
Moore, Patrick A. Science and Fiction. London, 1957.
Moskowitz, Sam. Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of
Science Fiction. Cleveland and New York, l9o3.
_________ . The Immortal Storm: A History of Science
Fiction Fandom. Atlanta, 1954.
Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science
Fiction. Cleveland and New York, 1966.
418
Murch, A[liua] E[lizabeth]. The Development of the Detective
Novel. New York, 1958.
Nemecek, Zdenek. "Karel Capek," in Joseph Remenyi et al.,
World Literatures. Pittsburgh, 1956.
Nicolson, Mariorie Hope. Voyages to the Moon. New York,
1948.
O'Hara, Robert C. Media for the Millions: The Process of
Mass Communicationsi New York, 1962.
Panshin, Alexei. Heinlein in Dimension: A Critical
Analysis. Chicago, 1968.
Farrington, Vernon L., Jr. American Dreams, 2nd ed. Brown
University Studies, 11. New York, 1964
Prehoda, Robert W. Designing the Future: The Role of
Technological Forecasting. Philadelphia, 1967.
Read, Herbert. "Fantasy," pp. 136-151 in English Prose
Style. Boston, 1952.
Robbins, Rossell Hope. The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and
Demonology. New York^ 1959.
Rogers, Alva. A Requiem for "Astounding." Chicago, 1964.
Rosenberg, Bernard, and White, David Manning, eds. Mass
Culture: The Popular Arts in America. Glencoe,
Illinois, 1937". ----------------
Ruyer, Raymond. L'Utopie et les utopies. Paris, 1950.
Scarborough, Dorothy. The Supernatural in Modern English
Fiction. New York and London, 1917.
Schlismann, Aloys Rob. Beitrage zur Geschichte und Kritik
des Naturalismus. Kiel ana Leipzig, 1903.
Schoeck, Helmut, and Wiggins, James W., eds. Scientism and
Values. Princeton, 1960.
Scholes, Robert. The Fabulators. New York, 1967.
Schwonke, Martin. Vom Staatsroman zur Science Fiction:
Eine Untersuchung uber Geschichte und Funktion der~
naturwissenschaftlich-technischen Utopie. Gottinger
Abhandlungen zur Soziologie, 2. Stuttgart, 1957.
419
Siclier, Jacques. Images de la science fiction. Paris,
1958.
Small, Miriam R. "Afterword," pp. 359-366, Signet Classic
edition of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elsie Venner.
New York, 1961.
Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.
New York, 1959.
Sontag, Susan. "Imagination of Disaster," in Against Inter
pretation and Other Essays. New York, 1966.
Spender, Stephen. The Struggle of the Modern. Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 19F5"!
Summers, Montague. The Gothic Quest: A History of the
Gothic Novel. London, | _ 1938 J " !
Sypher, Wylie, ed. Comedy. Garden City, 1956.
Tolkien, J. R. R. "On Fairy-Stories," Tree and Leaf,
London, 1964.
Wagar, W. Warren. H. G. Wells and the World State.
New Haven, 1961.
Wheeler, Raymond Holder. The Science of Psychology: An
Introductory Study. New York, 1929.
Yershov, Peter. Science Fiction and Utopian Fantasy in
Soviet Literature. New York, 1954.
Zola, Emile. The Experimental Novel and Other Essays,
trans. Belle M. Sherman. New York, 1893.
II. Magazine Articles
Alphabetical listing by authors, excluding book
reviews specifically related to one of the six novels
studied (see Bibliography B, section III), continuing book
review columns and features in science fiction magazines
(Bibliography B, section IV), introductions and essays in
anthologies of science fiction stories (Bibliography A,
section II), and essays in books (Bibliography B, section
I).
420
Adams, J. Donald. "Speaking of Books," New York Times Book
Review, July 12, 1953, p. 2; September 13, 1953, p. T ~ .
Aldiss, Brian. "British Science Fiction Now," S F Horizons,
2 (Winter, 1965), 13-37.
Amis, Kingsley. "Science Fiction: A Practical Nightmare,"
Holiday, February, 1965, pp. 8-15.
Anonymous. "Outpaced by Space," review of The Year's Best
S-F, 7th Annual Edition, ed. Judith Merril, Time,
January 4, 1963, pp. 71-72.
"Overtaking the Future," Newsweek, October 8,
lW,'p. 104.
_________ . "Science Fiction Rockets into Big Time,"
Business Week, October 20, 1951, pp. 82-84, 89.
Asimov, Isaac. "Fact Catches Up with Fiction," New York
Times Magazine, November 19, 1961, pp. 34, 39, 42, 44.
Ballard, J. G. "Which Way to Inner Space," guest editorial,
New Worlds, May, 1962, pp. 2-3, 116-118.
Bernabev, Ednita P. "Science Fiction: A New Mythos," The
Psychoanalytic Quarterly, XXVI, 4 (1957), 527-535.
Blish, James. "Theodore Sturgeon's Microcosm," F&SF,
September, 1962, pp. 42-45.
Campbell, John W., Jr. "Portrait of You," Astounding, May,
1958, pp. 135-136.
_________ . "Science Fact and Science Fiction," Writer,
August, 1964, pp. 26-27.
_________ . "Science-Fiction and the Opinion of the Uni
verse," Saturday Review, May 12, 1956, pp. 9-10, 42-43.
_________ . "The Science of Science Fiction," The Atlantic
Monthly, May, 1948, pp. 97-98.
Clement, Hal. "Whirligig World," Astounding, June, 1953,
pp. 102-114.
Frank, Stanley. "Out of This World," Nation's Business,
March, 1952, pp. 41-42, 80-81.
Gardner, Martin. "Humorous Science Fiction," Writer, May,
1949, pp. 148-151.
421
Gibbs, Angelica. "Onward and Upward with the Arts:
Inertrum, Neutronium, Chromaloy, P-P-P-Proot!1 1 The New
Yorker, February 13, 1943, pp. 42, 44, 47-48. 50, 52-53.
Harrison, Harry. "We Are Sitting on Our . . . ,"
S F Horizons, 1 (Spring, 1964), 39-42.
Hausermann, H. W. "Science Fiction, a New Kind of Mass
Literature," Levende Talen (Brussels), CLXXXI (1955),
394-405.
Hillegas, Mark R. "A Draft of the Science-Fiction Canon to
be Proposed at the 1961 MLA Conference on Science
Fiction," Extrapolation, III (December, 1961), 26-30.
_________ . "Dystopian Science Fiction: New Index to the
Human Situation," New Mexico Quarterly, XXXI, 3 (Autumn,
1961), 238-249.
Hirsch, Walter. "The Image of the Scientist in Science
Fiction: A Content Analysis," American Journal of
Sociology, LXIII, 5 (March, 1958), 506-512. ~
Kostolefsky, Joseph. "Science, Yes--Fiction, Maybe,"
Antioch Review, XIII, 2 (June, 1953), 236-240.
Lear, John. "Let's Put Some Science into Science-Fiction,"
Popular Science Monthly, August, 1954, pp. 135-137, 244,
246, 248.
Mandel, Siegfried, and Fingesten, Peter. "The Myth of
Science Fiction," Saturday Review, August 27, 1955,
pp. 7-8, 24-25, 28.
MeComas, J. Francis. "The Spaceman's Little Nova," New York
Times Book Review, November 20, 1955, p. 53.
McDonnell, Thomas P. "The Cult of Science Fiction,"
Catholic World, October, 1953, pp. 15-18.
Merril, Judith. "Theodore Sturgeon," F&SF, September, 1962,
pp. 46-55.
_________ . "What Do You Mean--Science?/Fiction?"
Extrapolation, VII (May, 1966), 30-46; VIII (December,
1966) , 2-19“
Michaelson, L. W. "Science Fiction, Censorship, and Pie-in-
the-Sky," Western Humanities Review, XIII, 4 (Autumn,
1959), 409-413.
422
Miller, Walter M., Jr. "Bobby and Jimmy," Nation, April 7,
1962, pp. 300-303.
Morse, C. Robert. "The Game of If," review of The Best from
"Fantasy and Science Fiction," 7th Series, ed. Anthony
Boucher, National Review, May 3, 1958, pp. 427-428.
Muller, Hermann J. "Science Fiction as an Escape," The
Humanist, XVII, 6 (1957), 333-346.
Nathan, Paul S. "Books into Films," Publisher's Weekly,
June 18, 1949, p. 2463.
O'Neil, P. "Barnum of the Space Age," Life, July 26, 1963,
pp. 62-64.
Plank, Robert. "The Golem and the Robot," Literature and
Psychology, XV, 1 (Winter, 1965), 12-28.
Pohl, Frederik. "Three in a Row," editorial, IF, December,
1968, p. 4.
Pratt, Fletcher. "Time, Space, and Literature," Saturday
Review, July 28, 1951, pp. 16-17, 27-28.
Priestley, J. B. "Thoughts in the Wilderness: They Come
from Inner Space," New Statesman and Nation, December 5,
1953, pp. 712, 714.
Smith, Godfrey. "Astounding Story! About a Science Fiction
Writer," New York Times Magazine, March 6, 1966, pp. 28,
75-77.
Stine, G. Harry. "Science Fiction is Too Conservative,"
Analog, May, 1961, pp. 83-99.
Sturgeon, Theodore. "Most Personal," guest editorial, IF,
November, 1962, p. 6.
Tunley, Roul. "Unbelievable But True," Saturday Evening
Post, October 8, 1960, pp. 90-92.
Yaffe, James. "The Modern Trend Toward Meaningful
Martians," review of Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell,
and The Best from "Fantasy and Science Fiction," 9th
Series, ed. Robert P. Mills, Saturday Review, April 23,
1960, pp. 22-23.
423
III. Book Reviews of Novels Studied
For each novel, the reviewers consulted are listed
alphabetically.
a. Childhood1s End by Arthur C. Clarke (chapter III)
Boucher, Anthony, and McCoxnas, J. Francis. F&SF, October,
1953, p. 72.
Conklin, Groff. Galaxy, March, 1954, pp. 118-119.
Davenport, Basil. New York Times Book Review, August 23,
1953, p. 19.
DuBois, William. New York Times, August 27, 1953, p. 23.
Holmes, H. H. New York Herald-Tribune Book Review, August
23, 1953, pTYl
Miller, P. Schuyler. Astounding, February, 1954, pp. 51-52.
Rollo, James J. The Atlantic Monthly, November, 1953,
p. 112.
b. The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (chapter IV)
Boucher, Anthony, and McComas, J. Francis. F&SF, May, 1954,
p. 88.
Conklin, Groff. Galaxy, July, 1954, pp. 97-98.
Gerson, Villiers. New York Times, March 7, 1954, p. 16.
Holmes, H. H. New York Herald-Tribune Book Review,
February 7, 1954, p. 10.
Miller, P. Schuyler. Astounding, November, 1954, p. 150.
Pratt, Fletcher. Saturday Review, August 7, 1954, p. 15.
424
c. More than Human by Theodore Sturgeon (chapter V)
Amis, Kingsley. Spectator, September 17, 1954, p. 350.
Boucher, Anthony, and Me Comas, J. Francis. F&SF, February,
1954, p. 93.
Conklin, Groff. Galaxy, January, 1954, pp. 128-129.
Gerson, Villiers. New York Times Book Review, November 22,
1953, p. 34.
Holmes, H. H. New York Herald-Tribune Book Review,
November 22~ 1953, p. 19.
Miller, P. Schuyler. Astounding, June, 1954, pp. 144-145.
Pratt, Fletcher. Saturday Review, August 7, 1954, pp.
14-15.
Richardson, Maurice. New Statesman and Nation. October 30,
1954, pp. 554-556.
d. A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
(chapter VI)
Anonymous. F&SF, June, 1960, p. 87.
_________. Time, February 22, 1960, p. 110.
Balliett, Whitney. The New Yorker, April 2, 1960, p. 159.
Coleman, John. Spectator, March 25, 1960, pp. 444-445.
Fuller, Edmund. Chicago Sunday Tribune, March 6, 1960,
p. 1.
Gale, Floyd C. Galaxy, February, 1961, p. 139.
Kennebeck, Edwin. Commonweal, March 4, 1960, pp. 632-634.
Klein, Marcus. Nation, November 19, 1960, pp. 398-402.
Levin, Martin. New York Times Book Review, March 27, 1960,
pp. 42-43.
Miller, P. Schuyler. Analog, November, 1960, p. 87.
425
Perrott, Roy. Manchester Guardian Weekly, April 7, 1960,
p. 13.
Phelps, Robert. New York Herald-Tribune Book Review,
March 13, 1960, p. 4”
Prescott, Orville. San Francisco Chronicle, March 8, 1960,
p. 27.
Richardson, Maurice. New Statesman, April 9, 1960, p. 533.
Rowland, Stanley J. Christian Century, May 25, 1960,
pp. 640-641.
Yaffe, James. Saturday Review, June 4, 1960, p. 21.
e. Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys (chapter VII)
Bester, Alfred. F&SF, June, 1961, pp. 104-105.
Blish, James. F&SF, June, 1961, pp. 105-109.
Gale, Floyd C. Galaxy, February, 1962, p. 194.
Miller, P. Schuyler. Analog, June, 1961, p. 164.
f. The Crystal World by J. G. Ballard (chapter VIII)
Levin, Martin. New York Times Book Review, May 15, 1966,
p. 41.
Merril, Judith. F&SF, August, 1966, pp. 57-69.
Young, B. A. Punch, June 1, 1966, p. 820.
IV. Continuing Magazine Features
Alphabetical listing by authors of book review
columns and such other recurrent features as have been
cited in the text.
Boucher, Anthony. "Recommended Reading," book review
column, F&SF, September, 1954, through January, 1959.
426
Boucher, Anthony, and McComas, J. Francis. "Recommended
Reading," book review column, F&SF, Winter-Spring,
1950, through August, 1954.
Budrys, Algis. "Galaxy Bookshelf," book review column,
Galaxy, February, 1965, through January, 1969.
Campbell, John W., Jr. "The Analytical Laboratory,"
monthly feature with occasional absences, Astounding/
Analog, January, 1950, through January, 1969.
Merril, Judith. "Books," book review column, F&SF, monthly
with occasional lapses, March, 1955, through January,
1969.
Miller, P, Schuyler. "The Reference Library," Astounding/
Analog, October, 1951, through January, 196W.
Sturgeon, Theodore. "On Hand . . . Off Hand: Books," book
review column, Venture, July, 1957, through July, 1958.
_________. "Science Briefs," guest editorials, and
miscellaneous articles, IF, July, 1961, through March,
1964.
_________ . Science fiction book review column, National
Review, irregularly, September 23, 1961, through May
30, 1967
V. Handbooks and Bibliographical Guides
Listing alphabetized by compiler.
A[simov], I[saac]. "Isaac Asimov: A Bibliography," F&SF,
October, 1966.
Bingenheimer, Heinz. Transgalaxis Katalog der deutsch-
sprachigen utopisch-phantastischen Literatur 1460-1960.
Friedrichsdorf, i960.
Clarke, I. F. The Tale of the Future: From the Beginning
to the Present Day: A Checklist of Those Satires^
Ideal States, Imaginary Wars and Invasions, Political
Warnings and Forecasts" Interplanetary Voyages, and
Scientific Romances--All Located in an Imaginary Future
Period--That Have Been~~Published in the United Kingdom
Between 1644 and 196TH London, l$6l.
427
Cole, W. R. A Checklist of Science Fiction Anthologies.
[New York], l9f>4.
Day, Bradford M. The Checklist of Fantastic Literature in
Paperbound Books. Denver, New York, 1965.
_________ . An Index on the Weird and Fantastica in
Magazines" New York, 1953.
Day, Donald Byrne. Index to the Science Fiction Magazines,
1926-1950. Portland, Oregon, 1952.
De Camp, L. Sprague. Science-Fiction Handbook: The Writ
ing of Imaginative Fiction. New York, 1953.
Moskowitz, Sam. "Fantasy and Science Fiction by Theodore
Sturgeon," F&SF, September, 1962, pp. 56-61.
New England Science Fiction Association. Index to the
Science Fiction Magazines, 1966, 1967. Cambridge,
Massachusetts, 1967, 1968.
Nolan, William F. "A Theodore Sturgeon Science Fiction and
Fantasy Index," pp. 105-108, Three to the Highest
Power: Bradbury, Oliver, Sturgeon, ed. William F.
Nolan. Newark', I95S7---- ---
Strauss, Erwin F. The MIT Science Fiction Society's Index
to the S-F Magazines, 1951-1965. Cambridge,
Massachusetts^ 1966.
Tuck, Donald H. A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy,
rev. ed. 2 vols. Hobart, Tasmania, 1959. “
VI. Miscellaneous Published and Unpublished Materials
Contemporary Authors: The International Bio-Bibliographical
Guide to Current Authors and Their Works. Volumes II
(Asimov, Budrys), IV (Clarke), VII-VIII (Ballard),
1963.
Current Biography. Yearbook, 1953 (Asimov); October, 1966
(Clarke).
The 1 - > • ■ ^ *.ence-Fiction
Magazines.
a. Biographical Periodicals
428
b. Annual Statements of Ownership, Management, and
Circulation. Including circulation figures,
required by law, for 1960 and the
years following.
Astounding/Analog. December issues, 1960-1968.
F&SF. January issues, 1961-1969.
Galaxy. February, 1961; April, 1962-1964; February, 1965;
April, 1966-1967; February, 1968; January, 1969.
c. Booksellers' Catalogs
F&SF Book Co., P. 0. Box 415, Staten Island, New York
10302. List No. 93, Fall, 1968.
Fantast (Medway) Ltd., 75 Norfolk Street, Wisbech, Cambs.,
England. Monthly catalogues, May through October,
1968.
d. Doctoral Dissertations
Clareson, Thomas Dean. "The Emergence of American Science
Fiction: 1880-1915: A Study of the Impact of Science
upon American Romanticism." Unpublished dissertation,
University of Pennsylvania, 1956.
Hirsch, Walter. "American Science Fiction, 1926-1950:
A Content Analysis." Unpublished dissertation,
Northwestern University, 1957.
Topik, Fred S. "Utopische Gedanken in modernen deutschen
Romanen, 1930 bis 1951." Unpublished dissertation,
University of Southern California, 1956.
e. Lectures
Friedrichs, Robert. Sociology course, "Introduction to
Cultural Anthropology," Drew University, Fall, 1958.
Herbert, Frank. "How to Make a World," 22nd World Science
Fiction Convention, September, 1964, Oakland,
California.
429
£. Correspondence
Moskowitz, Sam. Letter from Newark, New Jersey, February,
1963.
Scheldt, Jurgen von. Letters from Munich, West Germany,
March, 1963; May, 1963; July, 1964.
Versins, Pierre. Letters from Lausanne, Switzerland,
February, 1963; February, 1964.
g. Conversations
Ackermann, Forrest. Irregular, 1963-1966, Los Angeles,
California.
Raguse, Siegfried. Three meetings, March through May,
1965, Berlin, Germany.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Samuelson, David Norman
(author)
Core Title
Studies In The Contemporary American And British Science Fiction Novel
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Comparative Literature
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest
Language
English
Contributor
Digitized by ProQuest
(provenance)
Advisor
Malone, David H. (
committee chair
), Goodrich, Norma Lorre (
committee member
), Phinney, Edward (
committee member
)
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-660221
Unique identifier
UC11361090
Identifier
6908678.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-660221 (legacy record id)
Legacy Identifier
6908678.pdf
Dmrecord
660221
Document Type
Dissertation
Rights
Samuelson, David Norman
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA
Tags
Literature, Modern