The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence

by Alexei Panshin

  “Blackie” DuQuesne, on the other hand, is the scientist as pure rationalizing intellect. He has neither friends nor a balance wheel. Humanity and human relationships are of no importance to him whatsoever. He cares about three things only—which may ultimately be one. DuQuesne values science, power, and truth to himself.

  Very early in the game, DuQuesne figures out what Seaton and Crane are up to, and in an attempt to thwart them and gain control of Seaton’s discovery, he forges a black compact with the equally unscrupulous World Steel Corporation. This alliance of power-seekers—like the relationship between Seaton and Crane—is one more measure of the radical newness of The Skylark of Space. In former times, the mad scientists who experimented with science-beyond-science were gifted amateurs fooling around in private. Never previously were they imagined as professional chemists departing government service for greater opportunity as a consultant with the steel trust or an entrepreneurial partnership with an independent millionaire.

  In their mad pursuit of power, DuQuesne and his allies will stop at nothing. They offhandedly commit burglary and murder. They steal some of the precious supply of X, the mysterious catalytic metal, and build a ship of their own. And they attempt to sabotage the construction of the Skylark.

  But then the time comes when they overreach themselves. The day following Seaton and Crane’s circumnavigation of the moon, DuQuesne swoops down in his spaceship. He leaps out, clad all in leather, and wearing an aviator’s helmet with earflaps and amber goggles, and snatches up Dorothy Vaneman.

  But Dorothy is a plucky girl. She kicks DuQuesne’s henchman in the solar plexus and knocks him unconscious. The thug staggers against the control board, and the ship screams away toward the stars. Seaton and Crane set one of Seaton’s inventions—“the object-compass”243—on DuQuesne’s ship, and follow in the Skylark.

  Thus it is, through crime, an accident, and hot pursuit, that we arrive at the true business of The Skylark of Space. Not the exploration of the local solar system—but the exploration of the stars!

  And we also have an answer to H.G. Wells’s inability to imagine what an ordinary man might find to do out there amongst the enigmatical immensities. The Skylark of Space suggests that even if we had no other reason to travel to the stars, our own human conflicts, attitudes and aspirations might be enough in themselves to provide motive to go and reason to act once we arrived.

  When Seaton and Crane finally catch up with DuQuesne’s runaway ship, they find it in the gravitational grip of a dark star hundreds of light years from home and unable to free itself. The Skylark rescues DuQuesne, Dorothy Vaneman, and Margaret Spencer, another girl that World Steel had found inconvenient and intended to hide away on Mars.

  Just how new and previously unimagined the territory is to which E.E. Smith has carried us is demonstrated by two of the major devices of the rescue. When the Skylark communicates with DuQuesne’s ship, the means must be machine gun bullets fired against the side of the ship in Morse code for lack of a better method. And when DuQuesne and the two women transfer themselves from one ship to the other, the spacesuits they wear are made of fur.

  By the time that Blackie DuQuesne has pledged his word to act as a member of the party and the Skylark has won free of the grip of the dark star, Seaton and his companions are fully five thousand light years from Earth. They lack the copper fuel to return home. And so they are almost obliged to explore the first planets they can locate.

  If we were not previously convinced that the immense stellar universe that has been entered with the aid of super-science was a guise of the World Beyond the Hill, the first landing of the Skylark would end all doubt. The humans enter the system of a white sun and set down on one of its planets, touching down on an outcropping of rock that is guarded by a strange tree: “At one end of the ledge rose a giant tree, wonderfully symmetrical, but of a peculiar form, its branches being longer at the top than at the bottom and having broad, dark-green leaves, long thorns, and odd, flexible, shoot-like tendrils.”244

  And, mirabile dictu, it seems that X has carried them home to X. The ledge they have landed upon is pure unknown metal.

  But this is only the beginning. Hardly have they begun to explore when they are attacked by a giant carnivore, which DuQuesne shoots. This is the signal for an utterly bizarre explosion of violence:

  The scene, so quiet a few moments before, was horribly changed. The air seemed filled with hideous monsters. Winged lizards of prodigious size hurtled through the air to crash against the Skylark’s armored hull. Flying monstrosities, with the fangs of tigers, attacked viciously. Dorothy screamed and started back as a scorpion-like thing ten feet in length leaped at the window in front of her, its terrible sting spraying the quartz with venom. As it fell to the ground a spider—if an eight-legged creature with spines instead of hair, faceted eyes, and a bloated globular body weighing hundreds of pounds may be called a spider—leaped upon it; and mighty mandibles against terrible sting, a furious battle raged. Twelve-foot cockroaches climbed nimbly across the fallen timber of the morass and began feeding voraciously on the carcass of the creature DuQuesne had killed. They were promptly driven away by another animal, a living nightmare of that reptilian age which apparently combined the nature and disposition of tyrannosaurus rex with a physical shape approximating that of the saber-tooth tiger. This newcomer towered fifteen feet high at the shoulders and had a mouth disproportionate even to his great size; a mouth armed with sharp fangs three feet in length. He had barely begun his meal, however, when he was challenged by another nightmare, a thing shaped more or less like a crocodile.245

  But then, with a decisive and unexpected act by the great guardian tree of the ledge, this superfluity of brute struggles concludes as abruptly as it began:

  Suddenly the great tree bent over and lashed out against both animals. It transfixed them with its thorns, which the watchers now saw were both needle-pointed and barbed. It ripped at them with its long branches, which were in fact highly lethal spears. The broad leaves, equipped with sucking disks, wrapped themselves around the hopelessly impaled victims. The long, slender twigs or tendrils, each of which now had an eye at its extremity, waved about at a safe distance.

  After absorbing all of the two gladiators that was absorbable, the tree resumed its former position, motionless in all its strange, outlandish beauty.246

  The second planetary stopover that the Skylark makes is also highly fantastic. Here they encounter a disembodied intelligence who appears in the likeness of first one and then another of the party.

  This being sneers at their feebleness, calls them “nothings,”247 and attempts to dematerialize them. But it is thwarted at last by the combined mental resistance of the five humans. The intelligence gives the most credit for its defeat to DuQuesne:

  “Keep on going as you have been going, my potential kinsman; keep on studying under those eastern masters as you have been studying, and it is within the realm of possibility that, even in your short lifetime, you may become capable of withstanding the stresses concomitant with induction into our ranks.”248

  And it withdraws. DuQuesne is left to say that he isn’t sure which of the esoteric philosophies he has studied is the relevant one, but that he will try to find out because being a sexless, deathless, disembodied intelligence would be his idea of heaven.

  On their third stop, Seaton and his companions discover a copper-bearing planet inhabited by humanlike aliens. This planet, Osnome—which may very well be a reference to the early Twentieth Century children’s fantasies of the land of Oz by the American writer L. Frank Baum—is caught in the grip of a 6000-year war between the opposing nations of Mardonale and Kondal. When they discover that the Mardonalians are a treacherous lot, completely lacking in any sense of honor or conscience, Seaton and Crane place their power at the service of Kondal and bring the war to a conclusion.

  Richard Seaton and his Dorothy, Martin Crane and Margaret, are married in a double ceremony on Osnome. The Skylark then follo
ws its object-compass back home to Earth, where DuQuesne escapes. The story ends with a happy homecoming for the Seatons and the Cranes.

  Three crucial points separate The Skylark of Space from earlier SF. All three of these points are confirmed and underlined in the story’s immediate sequel, Skylark Three (Amazing, Aug.-Oct. 1930).

  The first significant difference is that Seaton and his friends are neither daunted nor driven mad by the vast reaches of interstellar space they have entered. Indeed, just before the first planetary landing of the Skylark, Seaton speaks to his fiancée:

  “ ‘A strange world, Dorothy,’ he said gravely. ‘You are not afraid?’ ”

  And she replies: “ ‘I am only thrilled with wonder.’ ”249

  Seaton and his companions are natural citizens of the World Beyond the Hill, willing to accept whatever they find. In The Skylark of Space, the new interstellar realm of wonder presents them with an array of challenges: the power of dead matter in the form of the dark star; the brute animal struggle for survival on the planet of the ledge; the danger offered by a being of immensely superior intelligence; and finally the great inexorable force of history on the planet Osnome. And again and again, the party of humans manages to measure up.

  Their fundamental reorientation from Village Earth to the greater world of space is given explicit expression early in Skylark Three when the Seatons and Cranes have taken off in their ship and left Earth behind.

  Well clear of the Earth’s influence, Seaton assured himself that everything was functioning properly, then stretched to his full height, writhed his arms over his head and heaved a deep sigh of relief.

  “Folks,” he declared, “this is the first time I’ve felt right since we got out of this old bottle. Why, I feel so good a cat could walk up to me and scratch me right in the eye, and I wouldn’t even scratch back. Yowp! I’m a wild Siberian catamount, and this is my night to howl. Whee-ee-yerow!”250

  Near the end of Skylark Three, Seaton and his friends pass entirely outside of our home galaxy and look back upon it, one dim patch of light among many. Dorothy declares that she is scared pea-green and seeks comfort. And even Seaton admits, “ ‘I’m scared purple myself.’ ”251 But by the third story in the series, Skylark of Valeron (Astounding, Aug. 1934-Feb. 1935), Seaton and his companions are able to leap lightly from one galaxy to another without a qualm. There is nowhere they cannot go and no challenge they cannot meet.

  The second point of importance to be found in The Skylark of Space is the rejection of ruthless self-interested rationalism, that road of intellectuality that leads eventually to Big Brain, and perhaps beyond. In The Skylark of Space, this line of development is resisted in three different forms—first in the person of Dr. Marc “Blackie” DuQuesne; again in the aspect of the malevolent disembodied intelligence; and finally in the arrogant and untrustworthy Mardonalians of the planet Osnome.

  In Skylark Three, the rejection of the rule of intellectual superiority alone is presented in the form of a war against a galaxy-threatening race of aliens, the Fenachrone. Early in Skylark Three, one of these announces to Seaton:

  “Know you, American, that we supermen of the Fenachrone are as far above any of the other and lesser breeds of beings who spawn in their millions in their countless myriads of races upon the numberless planets of the Universe as you are above the inert metal from which this your ship was built. The Universe is ours, and in due course we shall take it. . . .”252

  Seaton and Crane counter the threat of the Fenachrone by gathering together the knowledge and power of a variety of beings, including the formerly warring Mardonalians and Kondalians.

  This brings us to the third point of importance. What E.E. Smith sets in opposition to the road of hierarchic superiority is a kind of democratic pluralism that recognizes the validity of more modes of being than merely one.

  We can see this illustrated in the various natures of the company of the Skylark. All are different, but somehow, united in their difference, all together they count for more than the purest of pure intelligences.

  Margaret Crane is a sensitive moral being of vast insight. She is capable of seeing wonder in the most alien of races and something inherent in man as great as all they are encountering.

  Dorothy Seaton is a cultured being. She is a Doctor of Music who can play the violin so beautifully that a staid old race is moved.

  Richard Seaton is a refreshingly humble flashing genius—and also a bit of a goof, casual enough to hack around the universe in tennis sneakers.

  Martin Crane is bright enough to follow Seaton into unknown realms of science, even though he lacks Seaton’s originality. And he is also strong enough of character to serve as Seaton’s balance wheel, his good common sense.

  And there is even room in the mix for Blackie DuQuesne, a damned good man gone wrong—if only he will behave himself and act like a member of the party.

  In Skylark Three, the danger of the Fenachrone is successfully met by the union of alien races organized by Seaton and Crane. One of these races, millions of years older than humanity, salutes Seaton for what may actually be the human party’s one true mark of superiority—their larger frame of reference, their greater breadth of vision:

  “Doctor Seaton, I wish to apologize to you,” the Dasorian said. . . . “Since you are evidently still land animals, I had supposed you of inferior intelligence. It is true that your younger civilization is deficient in certain aspects, but you have shown a depth of vision, a sheer power of imagination and grasp, that no member of our older civilization could approach.”253

  It is not in inventions that human power ultimately lies—not in stardrives, spaceships and object-compasses—but rather in the ability to accept and unify vastly different beings and points of view. It is this combined power that ultimately defeats the Fenachrone, the would-be galactic master race.

  In The Skylark of Space and its sequels, we are offered a solution to the Twentieth Century dilemma. Doc Smith’s Skylark stories say that there is no necessary limit to human attainment. Mankind need not huddle in its stifling little Village, alternating between delusions of superiority and nightmares of cosmic doom. Rather, the way out of the problem of the age must lie in the abandonment of hierarchy and claims of special privilege, acceptance of the wider world of unknown possibility, and mastery of its perils through the unprejudiced cooperation of unlike persons and beings.

  This democratic approach to the question of human survival was not just Doc Smith’s alone, but was characteristically American. If the Europeans would very shortly come to the end of their ability to write creative SF, it was because they lacked the depth of vision and the sheer power of imagination necessary to alter their attitudes. The ultimate example of this rigidity must be Nazi Germany with its Aryan supermen, its attempts to eliminate the inferior and different, and its intent to rule Village Earth for a thousand years.

  Significantly, the new attitudes on display in The Skylark of Space may be seen point for point in our other two crucial American magazine stories of August 1928.

  In “Armageddon—2419 A.D.” by Philip Francis Nowlan, published in Amazing alongside The Skylark of Space, we are presented with the narrative of Anthony Rogers, a veteran of the Great War. In a brief prologue, Rogers informs us that in the year 1927 he was exploring some abandoned coal mines in Pennsylvania on behalf of his employer, the American Radioactive Gas Corporation, when a cave-in trapped him in a pocket of gas. He was preserved in a state of suspended animation for nearly five hundred years, awaking in the year 2419.

  Unlike a time machine, this mode of removal to the future allows Rogers no easy means of return to his own time. But no matter—Rogers does not tear his hair and bemoan his fate. He doesn’t even think twice about the Village world left behind. He is as open-mindedly ready to become a citizen of the future as Richard Seaton and his friends are ready to become citizens of space.

  The new world of wonder that Anthony Rogers discovers is a North America fallen from its for
mer high state. The continent lies under the domination of the Hans, a race of arrogant and decadent Orientals ruling from the security of their great machine-cities.

  The Hans are the living embodiment of the entire spectrum of early Twentieth Century fears: They are another would-be master race. They are the Yellow Peril. They are the eternal tyrant who rules for five hundred, a thousand, or even six thousand years. They are representatives of the grinding, inexorable and sterile machine universe.

  In the sequel, “The Airlords of Han” (Amazing, Mar. 1929), it is further suggested that the Hans are crossbreeds, a mixture of native Tibetans and “a genus of human-like creatures that may have arrived on this earth with a small planet (or a large meteor) which is known to have crashed in interior Asia late in the Twentieth Century, causing permanent changes in the earth’s orbit and climate.”254 Thus the Hans are also to be identified with racial mongrelization, cosmic catastrophe, and alien invasion.

  Here in these stories of the adventures of Anthony Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century, we are offered one of the last literal presentations of the concept of the soul to be found in American science fiction: The Hans, we, are told, are mentally superdeveloped, but they have “a vacuum in place of that intangible something we call a soul.”255