In the Problem Pit
Page 23
The existence of sf-as-agitprop has obscured the to-my-mind far more important feature of sf-as-analysis. But it is the analytical powers of the sf method that make its effectiveness as propaganda great; an sf story not only makes a statement about a particular imaginary world but carries the broad general implication that an infinite number of differing worlds are possible, and that small random changes in causal factors may produce overwhelming changes in social structures, kinds of morality, and even “human nature.”
For one example, consider religion. Theologians are just now beginning to catch up with science-fiction writers in thinking about the religious implications of possible non-human life on other planets. Few if any of them have yet faced the problem of wholly alien theologies. Nearly every human society stipulates One True God, a Heavenly Father who rewards and punishes. Clearly this is biology-related; humans have two sexes and a helplessly dependent infancy, requiring a family structure for survival. But what would be the theology of a sexless race, or one hatched from eggs laid and abandoned like the sea turtle’s? Nor has any theologian that I know of approached the question raised in Brian Aldiss’s The Dark Light-Years. Most humans, Aldiss argues, attach sacramental importance to such biological functions as sex (ritual marriage) and eating (saying grace at meals, ingestion of bread and wine at mass, etc.). But why should some other race not attach equal sacramental importance to such other biological functions as, for instance, excretion?
It is this systematic investigation of what causal factors are possible and what social consequences may follow them that makes science fiction a splendid tool for social analysis. To be sure, it need not be done exclusively within the pages of Analog or Amazing Stories, or even in the form of a story at all. Think tanks like the Rand Corporation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for the Future in Connecticut, Bertrand de Jouvenel’s “futuribles” panels in Paris, and many others do in fact use these techniques in nonliterary ways. But science fiction taught them all how, and science fiction is still the most pleasurable way of doing these things.
In essence science fiction reduces the entire continuum of human knowledge to a sort of board game, and by systematically changing the rules of the game one or a few at a time investigates the possibility of alternate societies. Is this an important thing to do? No, not just important; it is transcendental, for there can be no hope of making a change in any condition we deplore until we know what alternatives are open to us. Science fiction gives us a sort of catalog of possible worlds. From the wish-book we can pick the ones we want. Without it we can resent and deplore, but our capacity to change is veiy small.
One of the great personal satisfactions of living in the world of science-fiction readers and writers is observing how game-playing reduces partisan tensions. Our uptight “real” world affects science fiction, too. Some sf people are right-wingers and some are left; some are deeply religious, some not at all; some battle for women’s lib or black power or the freedom of the drug scene and some are firmly for the Establishment; and yet all of them are able to join in the game.
In a real world that every day seems more partisan, more grimy, more sullen, and more violent, this is a source not only of pleasure but of hope. Perhaps The Method can spread. Perhaps the world at large can learn from sf. And perhaps then the ants won’t have to replace us after all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frederik Pohl is a double-threat science fictioneer, being tlie only person to have won science fiction’s top award, the Hugo, both as an editor and as a writer. As a writer, he has published more than thirty novels and short story collections, including The Space Merchants (with C. M. Kornbluth), The Age of the Pussyfoot, Day Million and The Gold at the Starbow’s End. His awards include four Hugos and the Edward E. Smith Award. As an editor, he published the first series of anthologies of original stories in the science fiction field, Star Science Fiction; was for many years the editor of two leading magazines in the field, Galaxy and If; and is currently science fiction editor of Bantam Books. His interests extend beyond science fiction to national affairs (his book, Practical Politics, was a handbook for party reformers in the 1972 election year); history, (he is the Encyclopedia Britannica’s authority on the Roman emperor. Tiberius); and almost the entire range of human affairs. He is currently president of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and makes his home in Red Bank, New Jersey.
THE DOORS OF HIS FACE, THE LAMPS OF HIS MOUTH by ROGER ZELAZNY
A collection of fifteen stories of man in the future, ranging in time from a few decades to a few millenia into the future, in setting from the solar system to deepest space. The prize-winning title story is the highly imaginative and very believable tale of a fishing expedition for an enormous sea monster under the oceans of the planet Venus; the rest of the collection maintains the high standard thus set, with tales of a rebellious preacher’s son finding a different religion on Mars, of an expedition to an electrically-haunted mountain where a girl is discovered in hibernation state awaiting the discovery of a cure for her fatal disease, and of man’s penchant for aggrandisement. All display the style, wit, imagination which have made Roger Zelazny one of the most highly praised writers of science fiction today.
0 552 10021 8 - 50p
LOGAN’S RUN by WILLIAM F. NOLAN and GEORGE CLAYTON JOHNSON
It was a nightmare society - a world of the ‘cubs’ - rebel hipsters drugged to a point of frenzy - of a vast underwater city gradually collapsing under the pressures of the sea … of an ice hell in polar regions where criminals were sent to survive if they could … of a desert inhabited by psychotic savages.
It was a world where there was little beauty and no peace… where man, condemned to a short lifespan, fought against his own terror and dreamed of Sanctuary …
0 552 10123 0 - 50p
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME by H. G. WELLS
First published in 1933 it was described by Wells as ‘A Short History of the Future’, and spans the period from a.d. 1929 to the end of the year 2105. It is a chronicle of world events, a memorable catalogue of prediction involving war, technical revolution and the cultural changes which await mankind in the years to come…
0 552 09532 X - 95p
THE SHAPE OF FURTHER THINGS by BRIAN ALDISS
‘Haven’t you ever thought to yourself after a pleasant evening - or even a dull afternoon - that if you could have it all again, preferably in slow motion, then you could trace in it all the varied strands of your life?’
In this provocative book Brian Aldiss seeks to recapture some of the strands of his life, and in basic diary form he works alternately back into the past and forward into the future; the realities of our world alternate with the unrealities of fantasy.
The result is an autobiography spanning one month - a month in the life of a speculative writer, with topics ranging from the growth of science fiction in Britain today to new theories on the nature and importance of dreams.
0 552 09533 8 - 65p
THE SHIP WHO SANG by ANNE McCAFFREY
The brain was perfect, the tiny, crippled body useless. So technology rescued the brain and put it in an environment that conditioned it to live in a different kind of body - a spaceship. Here the human mind, more subtle, infinitely more complex than any computer ever devised, could be linked to the massive and delicate strengths, the total recall, and the incredible speeds of space. Bat the brain behind the ship was entirely feminine - a complex, loving, strong, weak, gentle, savage - a personality, all-woman, called Helva….
0 552 10163 X - 65p
RESTOREE by ANNE McCAFFREY
There was a sudden stench of a dead sea creature….
There was the horror of a huge black shape closing over her….
There was nothing. …
Then there were pieces of memory … isolated fragments that were so horrible her mind refused to accept them … intense heat and shivering cold … excruciating pain … dismembered pieces of the human body … sawn bones and searing sc
reams …
And when she awoke she found she was in a world that was not earth, and with a face and body that were not her face and body.
She had become a Restoree. …
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A SELECTED LIST OF CORGI SCIENCE FICTION FOR YOUR READING PLEASURE
□ 10022 6 NEW WORLDS NINE ed. Hilary Bailey 50p
□ 10182 6 NEW WORLDS TEN ed. Hilary Bailey 50p
□ 09824 8 NEQ THE SWORD Piers Anthony 40p
□ 09731 4 SOS THE ROPE Piers Anthony 40p
□ 09736 5 VAR THE STICK Piers Anthony 40p
□ 09081 6 STAR TREK 2 James Blish 25p
□ 09082 4 STAR TREK 3 James Blish 25p
□ 09445 5 STAR TREK 4 James Blish 30p
□ 09446 3 STAR TREK 5 James Blish 30p
□ 09447 1 STAR TREK 6 James Blish 30p
□ 09492 7 NEW WRITINGS IN SF 22 ed. Kenneth Bulmer 35p
□ 09681 4 NEW WRITINGS IN SF 23 ed. Kenneth Bulmer 40p
□ 09554 0 NINE PRINCES IN AMBER Roger Zelazny 35p
□ 09608 3 JACK OF SHADOWS Roger Zelazny 35p
□ 09906 6 THE GUNS OF AVALON Roger Zelazny 45p
□ 10021 8 THE DOORS OF HIS FACE Roger Zelazny 50p
□ 10161 3 RESTOREE Anne McCaffrey 65p
□ 10162 1 DECISION AT DOONA Anne McCaffrey 65p
□ 10163 X THE SHIP WHO SANGAnne McCaffrey 65p
* * *
CORGI SF COLLECTOR’S LIBRARY
□ 09237 1 FANTASTIC VOYAGE Isaac Asimov 50p
□ 09784 5 THE SILVER LOCUSTS Ray Bradbury 40p
□ 09882 5 DANDELION WINE Ray Bradbury 45p
□ 09706 3 I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC Ray Bradbury 45p
□ 09333 5 THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN Ray Bradbury 40p
□ 09413 7 REPORT ON PLANET THREE Arthur C. Clarke 40p
□ 09473 0 THE CITY AND THE STARS Arthur C. Clarke 40p
□ 10067 6 FARNHAM’S FREEHOLD Robert A. Heinlein 65p
□ 09236 3 DRAGONFLIGHT Anne McCaffrey 65p
□ 09474 9 A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWTTZ Walter M. Miller Jr. 45p
□ 09414 5 EARTH ABIDES George R. Stewart 35p
□ 09239 8 MORE THAN HUMAN Theodore Sturgeon 35p
□ 10213 X STAR SURGEON James White 50p
□ 10214 8 HOSPITAL STATION James White 50p
* * *
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1 For the term “the science-fiction method” I am indebted to an English sf writer named John T. Phillifent, more frequently seen under his pen name of John Rackham. I am not sure that he means the same thing by it as I do, but the first use of the term I encountered was in a private communication from him.