The Engines of the Night

by Barry N. Malzberg

  The second ten, all close runners up to be sure, are listed again in no order and with the understanding that any or all could be traded in for any or all of the top ten:

  “Baby Is Three,” by Theodore Sturgeon (Galaxy, 1952); “Live at Berchtesgarden,” by George Alec Effinger (Orbit, 1970); “They Don’t Make Life Like They Used To,” by Alfred Bester (Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1961); “The Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven and Other Lost Songs,” by Carter Scholz (Universe, 1977); “The Eve of the Last Apollo,” by Carter Scholz (Orbit, 1977); “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats,” by James Tiptree, Jr. (New Dimensions, 1976); “The Children’s Hour,” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (Astounding, 1944); “Timetipping,” by Jack M. Dann (Epoch, 1975); “The Big Flash,” by Norman Spinrad (Orbit, 1969); and “Party of the Two Parts,” by William Tenn (Philip Klass) (Galaxy, 1955).

  1980: New Jersey

  Son of the True and Terrible

  THERE IS NO WAY IN WHICH A CONTEMPORARY AUDIENCE—even the contemporary audience for “serious” fiction—can understand the degree of humiliation and self-revulsion many science fiction writers suffered until at least the mid-nineteen-sixties. Philip K Dick in a recent introduction to his collection The Golden Man, has written movingly of this; all through his first decade it was impossible for a science fiction writer to be regarded by writers in other fields or in the universities as a writer at all. College professors of English regarded the genre as subliterate; the timeless man on the street thought it crazy. Word rates were low, the readership was limited, and one operated from the outset with the conviction that work of even modest ambition would live and die within the same room that the debased did. Dick remembers meeting Herbert Gold at a party in the fifties and asking for his autograph; Gold gave him a card inscribed “to my colleague, Philip K Dick,” and Dick carried this around for years. It was the first acknowledgement from a person of literature that his work existed.

  Philip Klass has an even grimmer anecdote in his essay “Jazz Then, Musicology Now” published in a 1972 Fantasy and Science Fiction “college issue.” (At that time courses on science fiction at the universities were in the first flush; a little innocent capitalization never sent any of us to jail. Nor should it.) In 1945, Klass and a graduate student in English of his acquaintance met Theodore Sturgeon in an automat; Sturgeon (whose “Killdozer!” had just about then been published in Astounding) talked passionately and at length of the artistic problems of science fiction, the particular challenges of the genre, and the demands of a medium in which expository matter was of central importance to a story yet could not be permitted to overbalance it. After Sturgeon left them, Klass’s friend said with an amused laugh, “These science fiction writers, they really think of themselves as writers, don’t they? I mean he’s talking about this stuff seriously as if he were writing literature!”

  A writer who came into this field after 1965 cannot really know what it must have been like for Sturgeon and Dick, Kornbluth and Sheckley. At no time has it ever been easy to attempt serious work in this form, but after 1965 science fiction’s audience had increased: there was some crossover of that audience and the audiences for literature of other sorts, and because of Sputnik, the assassinations, the Apollo Project, and the employment of the clichés of the form by certain successful commercial novelists—Drury, Wallace, Levin all had bestsellers which were thematic science fiction—the form had a certain grudging cachet; people might not know what you were writing (or care about it) but at least they had heard of it. In the nineteen-fifties the only people other than crazy kids who would even admit to knowledge of the form were a few engineering or scientific types and they kept the magazines well hidden.

  There must have been a lot of rage in these fifties writers, rage and recrimination, and (most commonly) self-loathing for even being involved in the form and, after a while (because you fell into the habits and also because you became labeled), being unable to write anything else unless one was willing to repudiate the totality of one’s career, adopt a pseudonym, and start all over again. That rage was fueled by low advances, capricious editors, predatory publishers, policies in the book markets which consigned any science fiction novel to a defined audience, printed or overprinted a given number of copies, and after throwing them into the market, out-of-printed the book (and then cheated on the royalty statements). It was fueled yet further by the perception that most of these writers had of the disparity between their work—galaxies, world-conquering, heroes, superheroes, galactic drives, the hounds of heaven—and their lives, which were limited, entrapped, penurious, and often drenched with alcohol. Even a moderately intelligent writer could see the disjunction and its irony; some dealt with it by writing witty and highly ironic science fiction, but others went deeper into megalomania and fantasy and their promise was lost. And none of these writers were helped by the fact that television and the movies were appropriating their work to make cheap, mass-market pap of it; sometimes they paid low rights fees (Campbell got five hundred dollars for the movie rights to “Who Goes There?”), but most often they simply plagiarized. The fifties science fiction writer was a true van Vogt protagonist: surrounded by vast, inimical, malevolent powers who regarded him without compassion, struggling to reach some kind of goal which he could not define. But unlike the Gosseyns the fifties science fiction writer had no weapon shops of Isher, no Korzybskian logic, no seesaw, no secret plans, no occasionally helpful Overlords. He had only his colleagues to help him along and they were in as much trouble as he. Under these circumstances, the body of work turned out by the twenty or thirty best is a monument to the human spirit (or its perversity) unparalleled in the history of the so-called arts.

  * * *

  “What you have to do with this stuff,” a science fiction editor said a long time ago, “is to sit down with the outline and crank it; reel it out like porn. Otherwise it doesn’t pay, if you really get involved with it, try to have original conceptions or at least work them out originally you’ll slow down and can’t make any money. If you’re going to write science fiction for a living or even as part of a living, you have to do it fast.”

  Without evaluating these remarks (they are true for most of us; even in the decade of five-figure advances the average return for a science fiction novel in all its editions is still about five thousand dollars), they function as partial explanation as to why no science fiction writer has published more than two or three books of the first rank.

  In 1960, in fact, reviewing A. J. Budrys’s Rogue Moon, James Blish stated that no science fiction writer had ever written more than one masterpiece (he concluded his review by suggesting that if Budrys were able to come back to the field and get work done, he might be the first to break the pattern), and even two decades later there is not much evidence in contradiction; Silverberg has done five or six novels which are very strong, and so has Philip K. Dick, but even now as we regard the Le Guins or Delanys or Wolfes, even James Blish himself (who was a strong writer), who can be said to have published more than two?

  The economics of this business may change. Other exigencies will not. Science fiction is a difficult, rigorous, exhausting form demanding at the top the concentration and precision of the chess master and the skills of the first-rate litterateur. How often do these qualities intersect in any of us? How often can they be reproduced?

  Fortunately, for most, science fiction on the scene-by-scene level can be cranked, can fill space, can be mechanically conceived and rapidly written . . . it is a genre, it does have recourse to devices and a handy stock of the familiar. But here too the schism at the center is manifest: there has never been a science fiction novel so bad that breathing in its center was not an idea which once had merit; there has never been one so good that it could not be seen at the bottom to be based upon the clichés and clutter of the form.

  No, there ain’t nothing so good that we cannot get a glimpse of the worst, ain’t nothing so bad that it doesn’t demonstrate a littl
e of the good . . . there’s the best in the worst of us, worst in the best, all of us dummies of varying workmanship and attractiveness in the service of the Great Ventriloquist who do, he surely do, give voice to us all.

  1980: New Jersey

  The All-Time, Prime-Time, Take-Me-to-Your-Leader Science Fiction Plot

  EARLIER I OFFER THE CONTINUING DIALOGUE a number of plots or conceptions which would be—at least from my perspective, and perspective I have—unsaleable. Truthful as this material is, it is anything but helpful; if there is any audience for this book (in truth, there is no other) it is one comprised of aspirant writers, and I would not want them to regard science fiction as an endless series of Thou Shalt Nots.

  Science fiction, to the contrary, represents perhaps the last open and relatively accessible market in America (if one can write to format one can still, although just barely, sell without personal acquaintance) and needs all the new material that it can acquire; the old writers are beginning to perish (if not mortally at least productively) by the scores now and the middle-agers like myself are retreating to despair, editing books of ruminant essays, or continuations of the Albderan Raiders on the Moon series.

  Accordingly and generously I would like to contribute to the gene pool a number of plots, all of which, granted that you are a writer of routine proficiency, fluency, and dedication (a drinking acquaintance with the editors in all cases would not hurt), almost certainly will sell. Why shouldn’t they? They have been good enough for the markets for decades; they should be good until at least the millennium. Perhaps even the next millennium. Too much of a good thing is not nearly enough is the motto of science fiction; we want more of what we’ve got could be in Latin on the seal of Science Fiction University, good old Ess Eff You, weak major sports but good javelin and outstanding in track, water polo, and wrestling. The aspirant writers are welcome to them in full measure, and I seek neither thanks, praise, blame, a share of the advance, or a collaboration credit—only honor.

  * * *

  “The Underground”: Henry Walker Smith is a youth in the future, let us make it 2312 and be done; this particular extrapolation is based upon some mad extension of present-day circumstance that has overtaken the society.

  Okay, let’s get some use out of the things and use automobiles. In 2312 in Henry’s world (it is America but let us be futuristic and call it, say, “Occidentalia”) automobiles are banned. The ownership of an automobile, driving it, even concealing knowledge of anyone who owns or drives are criminal offenses. Citizens move around Occidentalia via tramways, chutes, corridors, and the like. Most live and work within the same Domicile and only the elite are in need of far conveyance, which is fast jet. Henry has little to do with the elite, accepting his position as a subclerk in the Bureau of Fabrication and Design with the feeling that it is all he could deserve, and to travel more than a very few kilometers from Domicile would be self-indulgent.

  We know that Henry is agoraphobic and terrified and can write some amusing scenes in which he reveals this tendency while justifying it to himself as “loving Domicile.” That will be one of the key phrases of the book—“loving Domicile”—and perhaps will catch the eye of the fans who will make it part of their lore.

  Henry is twenty-three. He enjoys his culture and aspires to be nothing other than a Senior Overclerk in Fabrication & Design, but shortly after the story opens, of course, in Chapter Two, things begin to rapidly change. He falls in because his girlfriend’s father is a crook (Marge confesses this tearfully to him the night that he tells her he would like to Co-Domicile) who works with a rowdy bunch keeping forbidden automobiles on a private estate dozens of kilometers from Domicile. “That’s horrible,” Henry says as the full implication bursts upon him, “something has to be done for his own sake; I’ll turn him in to the Overlords.”

  “You can’t,” Marge says, “I love him and besides if you turn him in the Driverists will know exactly who did it and will run you over in a corridor with one of their miniatures.” She caresses him soothingly. “Besides,” she adds, “cars aren’t that bad, they’re kind of fun. In the old days before Daddy got seedy and turned into a Narcotics Degenerate he used to take all of us out to the estate for drives and let us crash things and watch the great races and it was kind of fun.” Her eyes twinkle madly. “You might like it yourself, Henry, not that I’m asking you of course.”

  “I’d hate it,” Henry says, “are you saying that part of our Co-Domicile is the condition that I become a Felon? I won’t do it,” and he decides that he must look at Marge in a new light. Perhaps she is not quite the woman with whom he wants to Co-Domicile. He is awfully young to get into a permanent arrangement anyway, although the Overlords encourage early pair-bonding for their own sinister reasons.

  It is, however, too late for Henry; Marge’s father, a bumbling but fearful sort, has kept an eye on her relationship and comes to know almost immediately that she has told him about his double life. Before he can go to Headquarters and report the situation, Henry is abducted by the rowdies, spirited from Domicile, and taken to their crude and automobile-ringed estate far from there. His struggles during the abduction scene are quickly subdued, his protests are met with laughter, his pleas that he will be thrown out of Fabrication & Design are met with contempt. “Please forgive me, Henry,” a tear-streaked Marge says to him when he recovers consciousness (they have finally had to Overnarcotic him so valiantly did he protest) on the estate, “I didn’t think that they would do this to you but they’re desperate men. Anyway, why don’t you just listen to them and try to learn about the situation? You may find that you like automobiles. I know that I did.”

  Henry shakes his head, bitterly retreats to silence, resolves that he will have nothing further to do with her. He may be enchained by desperadoes but he does not have to lose his integrity even though Marge appears every evening after her own shift in Reconstruction & Reminiscence to plead with him to be reasonable. He finally begins to change his attitude when Marge tells him that her father has been imprisoned by the Overlords for circulating a Pro-Automobile petition in a tramway and is now being beaten by them daily. “That’s a little excessive,” Henry says, breaking his silence. “I mean, they’re not even giving an old man a hearing. And besides, those cars outside that I can see through the bars are kind of attractive; they glisten in the sun, which is much brighter here than back in Domicile. They said it was all poisoned here but it isn’t. Hey, if they lied to us about that one thing they could lie about a lot of things? Am I right? Marge, do I have a point there? Not that I’m ready to question the authorities to the point of defying them. At least not yet.”

  “But someday, Henry, you will,” Marge says, and the first (and last) scene of gentle sexual foreplay is written as Henry and Marge make love Oldstyle (but the scene terminates long before do their thrashings and moanings).

  A new and chastened Henry is then educated by the rowdies—who all turn out to have degrees in Traffic Control & Reconstruction; they have been falsely portrayed as ruffians when actually they are scientists whose search for personal freedoms as transmuted into their love for automobiles have become threatening to the Overlords—into the realities of the situation. What he comes to realize is that in the name of “energy survival” and “cleaning up the environment” the Overlords have managed to erode virtually all personal freedoms. The first encroachments via restriction of automobiles were seen in the last third of the twentieth century; hundreds of years later the Overlords’ control is virtually complete except that the scientists have managed to set up the underground kilometers from Domicile and with the use of the retrieved, sacred, reconstructed automobiles are ready to mass an attack upon the oppressors. They need, however, someone who knows everything about the Department of Fabrication & Design for it is deep in that department that the machinery which controls is hidden, and would Henry like to help them?

  “I don’t know,” Henry says, and he is truly uncertain until word reaches them that Marge has b
een abducted by Overlords who have gotten wind of the situation and are torturing her for information. “I can’t save her,” her father says, “but I’m going to try, by Cadillac I will. I did this to my only daughter and I’ll die to get her back.”

  Looking at the old man Henry hears the thunder of his own heart. “You won’t go alone, old man,” he says. “I’m going to go with you. They lied to us from the beginning but now we know the truth. Don’t we?” The scientists nod. “Now we know the truth,” Henry says.

  He takes driving lessons—there are some comic scenes here—on a replicated 1962 Cadillac Calais Coupe in brown with red leather interior and autotronic eye; at length he is at the head of an invading driving corps of the scientists who in seventy automobiles roar through the barriers of Domicile and descend upon Fabrication & Design. Marge’s father unfortunately dies in the second wave, being chased by the Overlords’ distracting robots, who dazzle him with mirrors and cause him to crash into a retaining wall, impaling himself on the steering hub of a replicated 1955 Chevrolet. Henry barely has time to weep at the spectacle before he is plunged into the sweeping combat scenes of the last chapters; he overcomes the Overlords’ defenses, fights his way to the heart of the bureau, and confronts the Chief Overlord. “You’re dead, Henry Walker Smith,” the cowardly Overlord says from behind his shield, but Henry (still in his car) uses the autotronic beam to dazzle the knave and then does away with him by backing the car with its protuberant, deadly tail fins into his belly. The Overlord expires with a gush.