Dr. Strangelove

by Peter George

  Yet the Slag Institute produced a man whose name would soon be known throughout the civilised world, that is to say, in those countries that had accumulated vast stocks of nuclear weapons.

  One can only regret that the founder was not present to enjoy a vicarious satisfaction at this parturition. But he had long since died. For his sake it is to be hoped that those who affirm there is no afterlife are correct.

  It may not be without significance, in pondering how the Slag Institute achieved this combination of virility and fertility to produce such a man, to recall the product on which the whole vast structure of the founder’s business was based.

  It was a vile-smelling and equally vile-tasting oil much appreciated for its allegedly aphrodisiac qualities. Coupled with a delicate and subtle slogan – Slag’s Solution is Great for the Gonads – the product proved irresistible to the populous for many years, though its manufacture had long been discontinued.

  So perhaps when Slag gave birth to its genius son, it was in some way moved by the spirit of its founder.

  Our hero was metaphorically born on June 26th in the early-sixties. He was at the time in his mid-thirties. No comet, star, thunderstorm, or other phenomenon heralded his birth. There were no eagles, nor trumpets. He slipped unobtrusively into the world, and people at large were not immediately aware of his emergence. His name was Strangelove. Doctor Louis Makepeace Strangelove.

  He was unmarried and had been on the faculty at Slag for fifteen years and could look forward to perhaps another twenty-five. Up to this point his life as a lecturer had been uneventful. His innate paranoia having revealed itself only in the delusion that his colleagues were conspiring to prevent him achieving greater success. He also suffered minor delusions such as that when he lectured, the few girls in his classes were secretly laughing at him. This had engendered in him an habitual shyness when in any way he was approached by them.

  All this changed when his first book was published.

  As he ascended to academic power his confidence grew, both through the success that he had with the opposite sex, and a mounting realisation of his own superb intellect and value.

  He became the victim of a grand delusion, not uncommon among the people who sit in the seats of power. Namely, that because they can enforce their wishes and ideas, those wishes and ideas must be right, and must be recognised as right in the similar seats of power in other countries.

  On this pleasant summer day we come into Doctor Strangelove’s study at Slag. It is an adequately sized room filled with rather shabby furniture and warm sunlight. Its walls are occupied by floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

  And now his book is here, two hundred and six copies of it, the two hundred which under various pseudonyms he had himself ordered, and the six free copies that the publisher presented him with under the terms of the contract. For two days he has savoured the delicious visual, tactile, and olfactory sensations that a first book almost invariably arouses in its author.

  The shabby furniture, of course, is typical of rooms assigned to lecturers in institutes of the status of Slag. The sunshine is a symbol of Strangelove’s length of service.

  Rooms at Slag pass from occupant to occupant in strict accordance with seniority on the faculty. A promotion or the translation to another college of a senior member of the faculty, a retirement, even a death – were all looked for eagerly by those of the staff who had unsatisfactory rooms.

  Strangelove had acquired his room, after ten years spent looking out on the garbage cans of the organic chemistry laboratory, when the senior lecturer in physics had succumbed to the fatal radiations of an isotope of caesium which he sincerely, but incorrectly, had declared to be non-radioactive.

  He attended the funeral, offered his condolences to the widow, and before the grave-diggers had finished their task, installed himself in his new campus room.

  It was pleasantly sited, with large windows looking out over the grassy campus, and facing southwest. Hence the sunlight.

  It is not uncommon for a college lecturer’s room to be filled with books, but usually they are arrayed in bookcases, except those that are currently in use.

  In Strangelove’s room, however, books are everywhere, overflowing from the desk to the floor, stacked on chairs, piled up against the small and inefficient water cooler in the corner.

  A section of one of the bookcases is empty and Strangelove is busily filling it from bulky parcels of books occupying much of the floor space.

  The books – his book – these were something yet again. Their covers were brighter than one would have expected in such a room and such an institution. Of everything in the room, they are the only objects that would not have been there if Strangelove had not some months previously decided that the revelation which had come to him, was too important to be confined to himself alone, or at best mulled over in erudite and witty little discussions with the few colleagues with whom he was currently on speaking terms.

  He could no longer remember what impulse had triggered the explosive in himself into violent and sustained detonation. He remembered only that for six feverish weeks, while his classes were neglected and his housekeeper became distraught, he had pounded inexpertly at a typewriter, and produced a manuscript based on his diligently monocular research. It contained the sum of his thought, a rationalisation of all that was most puzzling in the modern world, an honest analysis of – and solution for – the great nuclear dilemma.

  It was the fruition of his life as a scientist, but more importantly it revealed that this particular academic had studied not only science but the humanities, and had not merely sipped but drunk deep of the great writers, not perhaps so much of their ideas as of their feeling for words, their ability to express simply what they wished to convey. In short, the book was readable. And this was so uncommon among manuscripts dealing with such abstruse and complicated subjects that when Strangelove finally summoned the courage to despatch it to a publisher, it found immediate acceptance.

  A new book feels good. Its cover is glossy, its pages crisp and satisfactory to the touch. It smells good, with that faint suggestion of fresh printed ink that adds much pleasure to the possession of a new banknote. But above all, it looks good. There are the long lines of elegant print, whose clarity matches the clarity of the thoughts they set forth. There is one’s own name, writ both large and at least five times including the copyright mark, and seven if you have had the inspiration of adding a short dedication, and signing the last page with your name and the place the book was written. Strangelove had.

  And finally there is the cover.

  The cover of Strangelove’s book, in pleasingly contrasted but not violent colours, showed in the foreground a restrained and dignified fireball in brilliant white tinged with red, while above it, risen like a phoenix, was a pale grey dove ascendant between two hands supplicant.

  Strangelove breaks off as he hears the clicking of heels on the path outside, and moves to the window still holding four or five of the books in his hand. Outside he sees several of the girl students walking past. He watches them until they disappear from his field of vision, then looks down again at the books in his hand. He turns away and places them on one of the empty shelves.

  As he continues to unpack the books, he pauses again to admire the glossy cover, to flick through the pages of the text, and finally to look at his own rather severe portrait on the back of the jacket.

  So lost is Strangelove in admiration of this work of art that he neither hears the tap at his door, nor immediately notices when it opens and a girl steps over the threshold. Even when she speaks he does not hear her, and she is obliged to repeat her words in a slightly louder voice.

  The girl moves slowly forward. She is not unused to the effect she has on men, and particularly those who, like Strangelove, live sheltered lives far from the glamour of the Capital. And because she already knows a great deal about Strangelove, she is neither surprised nor disturbed at the almost catatonic effect she has upon him. Indeed,
it is because such an effect has been anticipated that she has been sent on her mission.

  She pauses a yard or so away from Strangelove, and his nostrils, already attuned to exotic smells by the savour of fresh ink, first twitch then flare in appreciation of her perfume, which subtly blends the sweetness of aromatics with a decadent hint of musk. He has never seen her before. She is no older than some of the girls on the campus, but there is about her a quality of sophistication and big city chic which brings into the room an exotic atmosphere.

  Strangelove is at first embarrassed by her presence, but soon he is at ease with her, especially when he is told that she has come to see not just Doctor Strangelove but the Doctor Strangelove.

  She wanders over to the bookcase and bends down to take out and look at one of the hundred or more copies of the book that Strangelove has so far placed on the shelves.

  Strangelove explains, though she is not asking for any explanation, that these are copies for friends and associates, and that he proposes especially to give one to each of those of his colleagues who has in the past doubted his capabilities.

  She rises gracefully, her supple body seeming to flow into any desired position at will, and turns to him smiling, the book clutched tightly to her magnificent and well delineated breasts.

  He realises suddenly that the girl is amused by a revelation which he never intended to make but which somehow forces itself up, perhaps by the stimulation of the presence of somebody who is so completely outside his normal experience. Yet somehow with this girl he does not feel the intense shyness and embarrassment which a situation like this would normally have caused him. When he sees that she is smiling, he smiles too. The absurdity of the situation and of his motives bursts upon him and both he and she begin to laugh about it.

  She tells him that she is not just a chance visitor but that she comes on behalf of her superior, General Clapp, who has been most impressed by Strangelove’s book and who wishes Strangelove to visit Washington, the Capital itself, to discuss the implications of what he has said.

  Strangelove demurs but by now he is completely under the spell that this girl has weaved about him, and although he blurts out his hatred and fear of the military, he has no proof against her charm, which is stranger than all his inhibition and fears. He agrees to go and the girl departs with an unspoken and unnamed promise of the type of reception he will receive officially from General Clapp and personally from herself.

  After she leaves, Strangelove sits in reverie for a long time. He can think of nothing else than the presence and physical image of the girl. He decides firmly to go to the Capital.

  Back in Washington we see the girl briefly reporting to General Clapp that Strangelove is hooked. The general is pleased by this news and makes arrangements for Strangelove to receive VIP treatment by sending his own personal plane, complete with attractive hostess, to fly him to the Capital, where a limousine awaits him and he is whisked to a palatial suite at one of the best hotels.

  Within minutes of Strangelove’s arrival, the General’s secretary telephones him, her voice warm with promise, and sets a time for him to visit the Defence Committee, though she does not tell him that the man to whom he will first be conducted is the psychiatrist to the Committee, Doctor Blot.

  In the Capital we see a meeting between General Clapp and Smith, a representative of the Strategic Industry Combine, who is a permanent member of the Defence Advisory Committee. They are discussing Strangelove, and each of them has a copy of Strangelove’s book open in front of him. They are expecting Strangelove after he has been screened by Blot.

  Clapp points out that of all the theorists who have written about modern war, Strangelove is the only one whose writing is lucid and easily understandable. Meanwhile Strangelove is in session with Doctor Blot and we hear some interesting reminiscences of his childhood and upbringing. It emerges that he was the victim of parental conflict, in that his father wished him to become a scientist while his mother insisted on him studying humanities. But since his mother died first, Strangelove ultimately emerged as a scientist, but not before considerable reading of literature had been forced upon him, which indeed he greatly enjoyed, and as a result of which he was now able to argue logically and in a readable style.

  The psychiatrist explores his sex life in some detail and we learn that so far it has been completely barren. On this note, with Strangelove diffident in answering questions, the interview ends.

  Doctor Blot now reports to General Clapp that he feels Strangelove is mildly paranoid. Clapp asks whether this means he is sane or not and Blot replies that all sanity is a matter of comparison, and that the General need not worry, Strangelove is at least as sane as he is.

  Strangelove is now brought into the room, and it quickly becomes clear that he is nervous of a close association with General Clapp and with the other officers and experts who have now entered the room. However, when asked by Clapp to give an explanation, in simple terms, of the thesis he has set out in his book, Strangelove suddenly finds himself at home and as he speaks develops both a confidence and a conviction that soon dominates his audience – with the exception of Clapp and the representative of the Combine, Smith, who exchange knowing glances.

  They see that in Strangelove they have an enthusiast who can speak with expert knowledge and genuine conviction on his own subject. But more importantly he can speak in simple, unmistakable terms.

  Strangelove’s argument presents the same theme as he has already developed in his book. It is this:

  Since the enemy has the bomb it is necessary for us to have it also as in this way it can be guaranteed that neither will use it. Thus primarily the bomb is a weapon for peace.

  But Strangelove explains it is not only a weapon that ensures nuclear peace, but conventional peace also, because neither we nor the enemy would initiate conventional war since whichever side appears to be losing, it would certainly resort to their nuclear weapons. Because the enemy know they dare not do this, they would never start even a conventional war.

  In the final analysis possession of the bomb is a vital contribution to the peace of the whole world.

  Strangelove goes on:

  In order for this to be really effective it is necessary for a balance of terror, though he prefers to think of it as a balance of natural harmony and interest.

  But what does this beloved balance actually mean? He feels it means that neither our weapons nor the enemy’s should apparently be ahead of the other.

  Now since it is well known that the enemy never tells the truth about his capabilities, it is only prudent to estimate that he has at least twice as much power as he has announced. This Strangelove calculates is about 25% more than we have, therefore it is necessary for us to increase our weapons system by at least 50% since while we should publicly praise equality, there is really no reason why privately we should not be just that little more equal than the enemy.

  How does this affect the country’s economy? Strangelove thinks it will be a very healthy thing for it. He estimates that it will provide enough extra work to absorb all those who at present have no employment. It will enable industry to expand, and to buy new machinery that would enable it to compete better in foreign markets.

  Therefore, since we cannot expect to conceal permanently from the enemy that we are taking steps to become equal with him – though he hopes it would be possible to conceal some of our extra capacity – sooner or later the enemy would be forced to respond. But, of course, he does not have the same economic capacity as ourselves, and thus he will be forced to divert production to the task. Since in any case his production for home consumption is limited, it is probable that this diversion will result in a decrease of the economic aid he is able to give to under-developed nations in the hope of obtaining political influence with them.

  This would surely be a very good thing.

  Strangelove concludes, therefore, that possession of great numbers of nuclear weapons is our greatest attribute in the quest for pea
ce. People are afraid of the bomb through ignorance. They do not think logically, clearly and objectively. It is said that there is no sentiment in business – he would say there can not possibly be sentiment in the business of keeping the peace.

  This is the sum of his arguments.

  At the close of Strangelove’s speech, and after he has been requested to wait outside, the committee discusses him. They are most impressed by his arguments. There is only one of them who disagrees. He too is a scientist, though his capacity on the committee is as economic adviser. His name is Goodfellow. He has detected the completely false premise on which Strangelove’s argument is based.

  Goodfellow is perhaps the only one present that is not moved by conflicting or plural motives. He is not a shareholder in any business – he is a pure scientist. He does not appreciate nor look for any particular advancement – he is content to put his talent at the disposal of the committee because he feels this is the right thing to do. He has recently married a bluestocking graduate and is very much in love.

  But Goodfellow himself is completely ineffective in attempting to explain his doubts, and is easily overpowered by General Clapp and the other members of the committee. It is agreed that Strangelove’s qualities fit him admirably to serve the committee as an adviser. The meeting ends with Clapp’s secretary, Elise, being sent to tell Strangelove about this.

  Strangelove, meanwhile, is waiting in an anteroom. Elise enters to tell Strangelove that the committee wish him to become an adviser on defence policy.

  Strangelove, now that he has finished his speech, is once again nervous and apprehensive. He is not at all sure that he wishes to associate so closely with General Clapp, of whom he is still rather scared. Again, as when he first met her, Elise has a strangely catatonic effect on him. She induces in him a state of stupor in which he speaks out about his feelings.