An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  INSTALLMENT 60: 23 JUNE 82

  PUBLISHED OCTOBER 83

  Rolling Dat Ole Debbil Stone

  Nothing in this world beyond the first 16 seconds of a baby’s birth is innocent. Nothing is precisely what it seems to be. Anyone who believes otherwise spreads the marmalade of folly on his daily bread of reality. Anything can be a paradigm of life’s important lessons.

  Parker Brothers’s Video Game Cartridge—Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back—seems, at first encounter, merely another of the seemingly endless permutations of the callus-producing rage that has swept an entire generation of Orphan Annie-eyed, over-financed, leisure time-surfeited teenagers into electronic game arcades from Tampa to Tacoma.

  But even the botulism bacterium looks innocent at first encounter. And The Empire Strikes Back videogame is an analogue for the Myth of Sisyphus.

  Never having played a videogame, having stared with creeping horror at the legions of silent, intense kids mesmerized in front of Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong machines in Chuck E. Cheese pizza & videogame parlors, I greeted the request to review this new cartridge with mixed emotions ranging from fearful curiosity to outright dismay.

  I had no reason to think this fad was any more dangerous than swallowing goldfish, phone booth-stuffing, Hula Hoops, or wearing one’s hair in imitation of Farrah Fawcett. Yet the vast amounts of money being poured into these games, the accumulated years of time lost playing them, the apparent absence of any benefit to the players, had produced in me a frisson of concern. In a nation where reading is becoming an arcane lost art, where television has become the universal curriculum, where the lemminglike pursuit of mindless “entertainment” has taken on the noble obsessiveness of a search for the Holy Grail, the inspired exploitation of the Star Wars totem in videogame form had, in the realm of possibility, the potential to emerge as the most virulent electronic botulism of all.

  The Atari console system was rigged to a television set in my home, I read the simple instruction brochure, and proceeded to bore my ass off for the next hour becoming as adept at The Empire Strikes Back as I cared to be.

  (Kindly refrain from kvetching that a ten-year-old can become more proficient at one of these twiddles than I, an adult at least in years, could ever be. Yes, he or she very likely can beat me 99 out of a hundred times; but no ten-year-old I’ve ever encountered can write MOBY DICK, create a Sistine Chapel fresco, or fuck with any degree of expertise. And none of those are taught by videogame.)

  The extremely simple-minded parameters of Parker Brothers’s Empire Strikes Back are consistent with virtually all other video games. Destruction is the object. A line of two-dimensional Imperial Walkers plod toward a Rebel power generator on the Ice Planet Hoth (if you can believe those mundane pastel readouts represent an Ice Planet). You, as player, have to blow them up with blasts from the five Snowspeeder aircraft you are given. The “object” of the game is to destroy as many of the Walkers as you can (it takes 48 direct hits to neutralize a Walker) before they reach the power generator and blow up the entire planet. Terrific object-lesson for kids to learn; invaluable for everyday life in a world where Nuclear Holocaust paranoia already immobilizes us.

  The Walkers fire missiles at the Snowspeeders. They can track the zipping aircraft, fire “smart bombs” that loop and follow a Snowspeeder, blast fore and aft of themselves, and otherwise cause you aggravation. Occasionally a “bomb hatch” will open—as indicated by a minuscule dot of light that strobes too briefly for anyone to hit—save someone who has devoted his or her life to playing this game—and the Walker is whacked at once. Your Snowspeeders can be repaired and go back into action, but only twice. If you knock out a Walker, another one appears. Smarter, stronger, with new abilities. Points are amassed for various degrees of destruction to the Walkers; and for every 2000 points scored, you get an extra Snowspeeder.

  There’s a lot more hurly-burly. Walkers change color and are weakened as a result of amassed hits, you can crash your Snowspeeder into a Walker, sometimes you acquire the Force and cannot be destroyed…32 variations of one-and two-player games.

  But here’s the bottom line, quoted directly from the rules brochure: “END OF THE GAME: The game ends when the lead Imperial Walker reaches the power generator—or—when the last of your Snowspeeders is destroyed.”

  In other words, you cannot win.

  The game ends when you lose.

  It may take you ten minutes or 15 years. The level of your expertise may grow to be so elevated that the game will have to be concluded by your grandchildren, but…you cannot win!

  In classical Greek mythology we find the familiar legend of Sisyphus, founder and king of Corinth who, because of his avarice and fraudulence, was condemned to the lower world, eternally to roll a great stone to the top of a steep hill, whence it always rolled down to the bottom again. This ghastly punishment, perceived through the ages as a paradigm for the worst eternal fate that could be visited on an errant mortal, is spoken of thus in WEBSTER’S DICTIONARY OF PROPER NAMES:

  “Hence, a Sisyphean task, an unending task on which immense energy is expended with little to show for it.”

  Hence, playing Parker Brothers’s The Empire Strikes Back videogame.

  An unending task on which immense energy and great gobs of money are expended with little to show for it.

  To be played by urchins incapable of reading a book, parsing a sentence, thinking an original thought; rationalized as valuable in establishing eye-to-hand coordination even if it’s a coordination so specialized it won’t help you sink an eight-ball in the hip pocket; costing, with its cheap and sluggish joystick console, enough to buy a good set of the collected works of Mark Twain; fostering a solitude of activity that separates the player even more from the real world; this latest icon of the Imbecile Industry is a pointless, time-wasting enterprise that can instill only one dreadful life-lesson in those of a youthful intelligence who play it.

  And the lesson is the lesson of Sisyphus. You cannot win. You can only waste your life struggling and struggling, getting as good as you can be, with no hope of triumph. As one with governments in power, the chief reason for the existence of this game is to stay in power. To keep you playing. Over and over and over, rolling that great rock up the hill, killing Walkers, only to have the rock roll down on you again, only to have faster, cleverer, more destructive Walkers come to life on the screen. And you play, and you play, and in the twilight you find the cobwebs have smothered your imagination, your leg has gone to sleep, your money is gone, your friends have grown up and achieved immortality and died; and you are all alone there in the gloaming, with the radiant screen and its two-dimensional electronic death-machines…firing, firing…lumbering…making no progress, winning no awards, enriching life not one whit.

  But does it really matter? Clearly not. Because life—as viewed by this and other videogame Body Snatchers—is a pitiless congeries of rocks being rolled up a steep hill, only to fall back. This is the lesson one learns from Parker Brothers and their shamelessly exploitative little toy. Unless one has the presence of self to become rapidly bored.

  What a helluva recommendation: the best one can hope for is that one yawns before one’s soul is snatched.

  Postscript

  What you have just read was my first and last encounter with videogames. It was altered and presented in an unauthorized manner by the editors of Video Review, one of the leading magazines in the industry, who had commissioned it. (For those who may feel Video Review acted courageously in soliciting the writing of one whom they knew would probably disaffect their prime advertisers, not to mention their drone readership, be advised that the commission was tendered by one of their junior editors, a fan of my books, who caught sheer hell from the publisher. Parker Bros. did, however, pull its advertising from the magazine.)

  Subsequent to its publication, I got a call from the office of the President of Atari in Sunnyvale, California. He wanted a copy of the original manuscript to frame on his
wall, having seen a framed copy in the offices of Dr. Alan C. Kay, Atari’s chief scientist.

  That was the first that I knew of the amazing ripple effect my humble efforts were causing. Apparently the essay was the first dissenting piece ever published in the videogame community, and the screams were loud and long.

  Within a month, the number one magazine in the industry, Video Magazine, featured an editorial by Bruce Apar, its head honcho, lambasting anyone and everyone who dared to suggest that video games might not presage The Second Coming or some other portent of Utopia. It was titled “Video-game Critics & Cranks.” And though it lashed out to all points of the compass in hopes of striking a target, the big blast was reserved for your self-effacing columnist as follows:

  Adding to the strident rant of these cockeyed pessimists [Mr. Apar wrote] are irresponsible periodicals, one of which recently ran a preview of a new game that insulted readers’ intelligence by virtually ignoring the game. This so-called review was in truth a diatribe against all videogames and people who play them. The writer, who freely admitted to never playing a videogame before, was operating on that familiar premise, “If I don’t like it, it’s bad for everybody.”

  Well, imagine my pleasure at discovering the behemoth was capable of a bleat now and then! Further enhanced by information that reached me later, the content of which was that Apar and his magazine had commiserated with Parker Bros. to the extent of telling their advertising department that Video Review was a nest of Bad Guys, and that they should convert all their advertising bucks spent with the magazine that had published such a dreadful bit of heresy…to the righteous venue of Video Magazine.

  I wrote a letter to Mr. Apar. Here is most of it:

  Dear Mr. Apar,

  Though referenced blind in your recent editorial, I suspect the name on the letterhead above will strike a familiar note. One of your readers, recognizing the referent, sent along a Xerox copy for my attention, with the words, “Looks as if you pinked the bull.” It would seem so.

  I was advised, when I wrote the piece for Video Review (at their behest, and with considerable reluctance on my part), that it was the first dissenting view of video games to be published in magazines whose vested interest is, of course, to keep as many kids goggle-eyed in front of Donkey Kong and Missile Command games as possible. And was further advised that it would bring forth the apologists for the industry in force.

  They were correct in their estimation, of course. Your sally is estimably off-the-point and no defense of what I wrote from observation in the Real World seems required. The studies are beginning to be published on the effects of video games on kids, so I take your umbrage as similar to that of the tobacco industry when it’s suggested that cigarettes might not be good for people. But if you’re going to rebut your critics, I suggest you find other grounds than that a reviewer had never before played such games. For that was precisely the reason I was chosen to write the review (apart from my literary and critical credentials which even Video would have difficulty assailing). I had no preconceived opinions, and was ready to deal on the square.

  It’s a shame Video, and you, don’t have such a lack of self-service. My, you do get upset when someone suggests the Emperor ain’t got no clothes, don’t you?

  Never received a reply. Didn’t expect to. Just felt like sticking it to him. Keeps balance in the universe.

  But little more than two weeks later, on November 10th, 1982, front page headlines all over America announced:

  U.S. SURGEON GENERAL C. EVERETT KOOP SAID TUESDAY THAT VIDEO GAMES MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO THE HEALTH OF YOUNG PEOPLE, WHO HE SAID ARE BECOMING ADDICTED TO THE MACHINES. “THEY ARE INTO IT BODY AND SOUL,” KOOP SAID.

  Naturally, I wrote a follow-up letter to Mr. Apar, the gist of which was: “Posterity seems determined to have its say rather more quickly than usual on this disagreement between our positions. How many ‘cranks’ does it take to make a consensus?”

  He didn’t respond to that one, either. Thank god I handle rejection with equanimity.

  I could not, in my most power-drenched fantasies, have postulated how speedily posterity was bearing down on the videogame Eden and all its leech apologists. I like to think I have a cultivated talent for helping to redress the balance in the universe, but not even Zorro had the power to decimate an entire multi-billion-dollar industry so quickly. On two days in the following month, December, 1982, Warner Communications, Inc. (parent company of Atari, Inc., as well as of DC Comics) watched its stock plummet 45% as Atari went into the toilet.

  Atari, whose revenues were nibbling at the edge of $2 billion a year, with 10,000 employees in fifty buildings all across Silicon Valley, announced on December 8th that they had been hit by massive order cancellations, and in the next two days (as reported by the Wall Street Journal) stockholders lost a collective $1.5 billion to $2 billion on paper. Soon after there were rumors of insider trading, rumors that certain Warner and Atari executives had jettisoned huge blocks of Warner shares just before the price tumbled. Stockholders filed suit to find out what actually happened inside the company, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating.

  All over America, landlords who only a few years ago were forcing Mom&Pop grocery stores and boutiques out of their locations so the shops could be converted into videogame arcades, are finding they have echoing emptiness to show for the sudden drop in clientele. As quickly as it dominated the scene, the videogame craze has receded.

  At moments like these, I find my reluctant acceptance of the transient nature of the human race ameliorated. Perhaps the cockroaches won’t take over in my lifetime.

  On the other hand, the miasmic spirit of James Watt is still with us.

  Interim memo

  Mr. Smith became a self-fulfilling prophecy. He read the reprints of Installments 18 and 30, and he wrote a letter to the aforementioned “magazine.” I’ve mentioned this twice earlier in these pages. It was supposed to be a one-paragraph reply. But Mr. Smith pulled his own covers, he revealed himself, and he told us something we need to know; and once we have learned it we must never forget it. What started out as a flippant reply to a letter turned dark and ominous as it became an unexpected 61st Edge.

  First, Mr. Smith’s letter, exactly as it appeared in print…then an ominous dark message from beyond the campfire. How Fate does take a hand. This book might have ended on the trivial note of videogames. But there is a dark force out there that never lets us forget we are prey. It waited more than a year and a half to make its presence known again, even as this book went to the typesetters, but it came in at the finish line. Maybe that’s why we aren’t laughing.

  Letters reprinted with permission

  INSTALLMENT 60: 21 AUGUST 84

  PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 84

  Photo: Peter Cathro

  The smiler with the knife. The flesh that always smells of soap. The good book, called the Good Book, seldom seen opened but held tightly to the chest by a hand with clean fingernails. Assassins with shined shoes.

  There is nothing wrong. We repeat, listen carefully, there is no reason for fear. Ignore the faces pressed against the window. It’s cold out there, and out there is where they belong. In here, everything is all right. We repeat, for the last time: our way is the right way, the only way that maintains order and warmth. Pay no attention to the man with the noose.

  ————-LETTERS—————

  Ed Asner: Paranoid, Ego-Crazed Yahoo

  I feel compelled to introduce some personal insight into the argument of “Hysterical Paralogia,” part one, by Harlan Ellison. I have no quibbles with his painstaking ratiocination, and do not question the validity of his conclusions within the limits of the data at hand. But…

  Until very recently I worked as administrative support to the command staff of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The duties of my office included handling the sort of crank mail the paranoids of the world love to send to military intelligence organizations. Another duty was the processing of F
reedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

  Roughly a year ago we received a FOIA request from none other than Mr. Ed Asner. It made for interesting reading. It:

  a) Demanded the DIA turn over to Mr. Asner all files, memos, recordings, photos, etc., relating to Mr. Asner or Lou Grant.

  b) Demanded that any “lost” files be diligently searched for and produced at the earliest possible moment.

  c) Demanded that the files search, copying, and time costs be charged entirely to the government, as the effort was clearly in the public interest.

  Everyone in the DIA who saw this letter thought it hysterically funny, because:

  a) We did not have anything on Mr. Asner outside of the TV Guide in the lounge.

  b) The tone of the letter made it obvious that this simple truth would not be believed.

  c) It was thought incredible that he considered himself important enough to warrant our attention.

  Specifically, the silliness of the letter included the unwritten assumptions that:

  a) We were the enemy. This was obvious from the tone and the explicit assumption that we would lie (the quotes around “lost” in “lost” files offended most everyone in DIA).

  b) That the DIA, having been badly burned ten years ago, would violate federal law and keep files on a US civilian (and would comply with the FOIA to turn over self-incriminating files, had there been any).