Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  Though his outside writing activity had ceased, Simak continued intermittent reading on science fiction, without too much enthusiasm, until he learned that John W. Campbell, Jr., had been named editor of the revived astounding stories in late 1937.

  "I can write for Campbell," he told his wife, Kay. "He won't be satisfied with the kind of stuff that is being written. He'll want something new." There is the possibility, he now admits, that if Campbell had not been named editor of as-tounding stories, he might never have written science fiction again. His first submission was Rule 18, a novelette of the annual football rivalry between Mars and Earth and how Earth goes back in time to assemble a team of all-time all stars to defeat the Martians: an off-beat story, certainly, in its use of scien-tific invention for influencing a sports event instead of the usual business of saving the world from disaster. Campbell, enthusiastic, was sure he had discovered an outstanding new talent. He was a little chagrined to learn that Simak had written for astounding stories almost six years earlier. Rule 18, which appeared in the July, 1938, issue, while popular, rated only fourth in the issue in the readers' esti-mate.

  Nevertheless, Campbell gave prominent advance notice to Simak's Hunger Death in the October issue, a story dealing with the problems of Iowa farmers resettled on Venus, who have had that planet misrepresented to them but are saved from economic disaster when they discover growing on their land a plant which can cure an ancient Martian plague. This story is important, for it finds Simak writing of people he knows. Second only in frequency to the farmer in Simak tales is the heroic newspaper reporter. Reunion on Ganymede, Simak's next, was featured on the cover of the November, 1938, number. Dealing with a planned anniversary get-together of veterans of a war be-tween Earth and Mars, the story finds two members of opposing forces thrown into a situation where they reconcile their grievances. It was not an outstanding production, but it led the issue in reader approbation. The themes of the three stories—a football game of the future, Iowa farmers on Venus, and an old war veteran going to a reunion on Ganymede—represented a major move in the direction of naturalness in science fiction. Simak was explor-ing territory that would eventually produce pay dirt. The Loot of Time, published in thrilling wonder stories for December, 1938, was more traditional describing the sentimental attachment that springs up between a group of time travelers and a Neanderthal man who inadvertently gets caught up by future science.

  In giving readers a new type of story, should an editor dispense with the old? Campbell felt that while change was inevitable, there was still room for what he called the "pow-er" story and what has been termed by others the "super-science" or "thought variant" tale, something along the lines of Edward E. Smith's stories, in which entire universes are in the balance, where space and time are tools in the hands of advanced science.

  At Campbell's request, Simak wrote Cosmic Engineers, which ran in three parts beginning in the February, 1939, issue of astounding science-fiction. Cosmic Engineers employed epic ideas, including a civilization of robots who were guard-ians of the universe, a girl scientist in suspended animation for a thousand years (but improving her mind all the time), another universe in collision with ours, a council of great intel-lects of many worlds and dimensions brought together to cope with the problem and time travel: a novel with enough thrills for five sequels. Nevertheless, Simak considered the effort a failure. He had hoped to blend some of the ground-roots feel of ordinary people into the work but found that "you had to be grandiose in spite of yourself."

  Read uncritically, Cosmic Engineers is a much more exciting reading experience than the author would lead one to be-lieve. It does not bear close examination, however; there are too many loose ends, but it is reminiscent, in parts, of The Creator, even to a godlike manipulator who is senile and insane. This same

  "god" is the collective absorption of an entire race into a single mind, bearing some resemblance to Olaf Stapledon's "Cosmic Mind."

  It is worthy of special note that, like Asimov, Simak acknowl-edges that an important influence on his work was Nat Schach-ner. Schachner, a lawyer and very prolific science-fiction writer of the 1930's, was a seemingly endless fount of ideas. His adept handling of the human element lifted him a cut above many of his contemporaries. He eventually became an out-standing writer of history, particularly acclaimed for his biog-raphies of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.

  Following Cosmic Engineers, Simak decided to embark on a new fictional project—a picture of each of the planets as science knows them today. The first in this series was Hermit of Mars (astounding science-fiction, June, 1939), a cover story involving the efforts of an earth scientist to transform his flesh-and-blood body into one of pure force, like those possessed by the Martians, but the series was held in abey-ance for the next nine months because Simak, feeling that he was at a dead end with the McGiffin Company, had resigned and gone to work on the copy desk of the Minneapolis star. As far as his newspaper career was concerned, he had found his niche. He soon would become chief of the copy desk. His first story after the change of jobs was also one of his most successful. Rim of the Deep (astounding science-fiction, May, 1940) was an early attempt to deal with the exploitation of the sea bottom and the day when population pressures would force men to live beneath the waves. The novelty of the notion was not lost on readers but it has been infrequently picked up by other writers, the most notable subsequent works in this vein being Fury by Henry Kuttner and The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke. Clerical Error (August, 1940, astounding science-fiction) was the second in his "planets" series, dealing dramatically with conditions on Jupiter; Masquerade (astounding science-fiction, March, 1941) was about a doctor who discovered crystals of immortality on Mercury. After Tools (astounding science-fiction, July, 1942), concerning a radioactive gaseous life form on Venus, he dropped the series as a bad idea. Simak wrote other solidly competent stories during this period, but the sad part about becoming a literary craftsman is that if a writer is really good, people are seldom aware of his growing skill. In Hunch, in the July, 1943, astounding science-fiction, he uses his much-imitated technique of per-mitting the principal character to think to himself for the readers' benefit. Hunch brings into being "Sanctuary," an organization that helps rehabilitate or offer peace of mind to those who have mentally broken under the pressures of advanced civilization, offering a haven when all else fails.

  Sanctuary! Something the race had leaned upon, had counted upon, the assurance of a cure, a refuge from the mental mania that ranged up and down the worlds.

  Something that was almost God. Something that was the people's friend—a steadying hand in the darkness. It was something that was there, always would be there, a shining light in a troubled world, a comforter, something that would never change, something one could tie to.

  And now?

  Kemp shuddered at the thought.

  One word and he could bring all that structure tumbling down about their ears. With one blow he could take away their faith and their assurance. With one breath he could blow Sanctuary into a flimsy house of cards.

  It was a newspaperman, armed with the tools of literary artistry and well versed in the problems of urban living, who took the very obvious theme of decentralization of cities and focused on its possible impact on the individual. It had been many years since David H. Keller, M.D., had dealt with the effect of then-current trends on the sociological and economic well-being of the average man. Looking back from the vantage of the present, the consensus rates City (astounding science-fiction, May, 1944) as a gem. But the theme sounded an unfamiliar note and opinion was divided.

  It was the second story in the "City" series, Huddling Place (astounding science-fiction, July, 1944), that solidified the positive reaction to Simak's effort. The story describes a decitified planet where personal contact had become increasingly abhorrent and culminates in the crushing horror of a man's realization that he is unable to leave his home, even to save the life of a good friend. Huddling Place is one
of the masterpieces of science fiction, either as a part of the series or as a separate story. A decade later, Isaac Asimov would employ some of its elements in the creation of the remark-able science-fiction detective story, The Naked Sun.

  Nathaniel, the talking dog of Census (astounding science-fiction, September, 1944), took the name of Simak's own pet Scottie. When the "City" series was collected by Gnome Press in 1952, the book was dedicated to Nathaniel. From him also sprang the idea of presenting the tales as legends told by intelligent dogs of the future, long after man had disappeared from the planet. In this story, too, are introduced the mutants who bring technology to the ants.

  Desertion (astounding science-fiction, November, 1944), was written before the other stories and was not originally intended to be one of the series. Included as an afterthought when the book was assembled, to show the beginning of man's transference from human to Jovian bodies, it makes a natural prelude to Paradise (astounding science-fiction, June, 1946), in which is made the political decision as to whether the bulk of the human race should migrate to Jupiter and con-vert to Jovian form. In Hobbies (astounding science-fiction, November, 1946), the dogs and robots are given the opportunity to build a future for themselves without physical or psychological interference from the few remaining men. The Cobblies, strange creatures from another dimension, are introduced.

  The near-primitive remnants of man show the robots how to dispose of the threat posed by the Cobblies in Aesop (December, 1947), a tale that teeters perilously close to fantasy and mysticism since the Cobblies allegorically assume the role of the ghosts and goblins (imaginary fears) that once plagued mankind. The point of the entire series was delicately brought home in Trouble With Ants (fantastic adventures, Janu-ary, 1951), when Jenkins, the robot guardian of the canine civilization, awakens a man from suspended animation to learn how to stop the ants, whose civilization threatens to end the dogs' reign on the planet. A simple way to end the menace, offered by the man, is rejected because it will mean killing. There has been no killing, even of fleas, for five thousand years, and the robots and dogs prefer to be dispos-sessed rather than resort to it again.

  "The series was written in a revulsion again mass killing and as a protest against war," states Simak.

  "The series was also written as a sort of wish fulfillment. It was the creation of a world I thought there ought to be. It was filled with the gentleness and the kindness and the courage that I thought were needed in the world. And it was nostalgic because I was nostalgic for the old world we had lost and the world that would never be again—the world that had been wiped out on that day that a man with an umbrella came back to London and told the people there would be a thousand years of peace. I made the dogs and robots the kind of people I would like to live with. And the vital point is this: That they must be dogs or robots, because people were not that kind of folks."

  From 1942 to 1945, science fiction was but a small part of Simak's fictional production. A larger portion of his spare-time efforts went into air war and western stories, particular-ly for Leo Margulies and Thrilling Publications. The tales were so formularized that Simak simply couldn't continue writing them and live with himself, so he dropped them and returned to science fiction.

  Eighteen years after his marriage, in 1947, a first child, Scott, was born, and a second, Shelley, in 1951. Simak was promoted to news editor of the Minneapolis star in 1949, in which position he was responsible for the entire news content of that paper. When space and atomics became more important he was put on special assignment, developing a science news program for the star and its companion paper, the tribune. In 1959 he began writing a weekly science column called "Tomorrow's World," which was received with enthusiasm.

  Sitting as pivot man on the news desk of one of the nation's leading papers gave Simak a broad view of the world. The additions to his family added the humanity to temper his outlook on world events. These elements combined in Eternity Lost, a novelette in the July, 1949, astounding science-fiction in which a senator of the future plays politics with the techniques of longevity. The story has a maturity of viewpoint and such consummate literary craftsmanship that it stands with the best, in or out of science fiction.

  Horace L. Gold, then planning the new magazine galaxy science fiction, had written Simak asking to see something from him, just as the finishing touches were being put on the novel Time Quarry. Serialization began in the first issue, October, 1950, of galaxy and played an important part in establishing the magazine. The novel, an underrated masterpiece, crackles with a spectacular display of writing techniques that impel the read-er through as imaginative a complex of events as ever has been presented in science fiction. Simak is as convincing as he is brilliant.

  A man crashes on a world of formless intelligences, who restore him to life and invest in him the secret that they inhabit as hosts every creeping, crawling, flying life form that lives in the universe; as a race, theirs is the symbiotic destiny to light the spark that eventually may lead to intelligence.

  "Nothing walks alone" is the message they give him, which he includes in a book which becomes the bible of a new religion. It particularly fascinates the androids, who feel that this common denominator makes them the spiritual equals of men.

  The efforts of future man to influence the writing of this book through altering events of the past carries the reader back to the farm where Simak was raised. The author's hobbies, his likes and dislikes, including touches from famous science-fiction works, as well as a grizzled image of himself in old age, invest the work with a richness of content that makes it completely satisfying.

  Published as Time and Again by Simon & Schuster in 1951, the book did not receive the attention it deserved. This relative neglect was compensated for by the granting of the International Fantasy Award to City as the best fantasy vol-ume published during 1952.

  After that Simak became the leading exponent of morality among modern science-fiction writers, one of the rare few who, while sensitive to the terrible pressures of the time, do not succumb to despair. His fantastic creations became symbols to illuminate hu-man problems. As far back as Hunch, the

  "sanctuary" allego-rized the dependence of the masses on the crutch of religion; Eternity Lost, in which a politician, making capital of discov-eries in longevity, literally loses his immortal soul, makes its point figuratively; Courtesy (astounding science-fiction, August, 1951) underscores the thin line between dignity and arrogance; How-2 (galaxy science fiction, November, 1954) had the dubious honor of being converted into a gadgeted musical which didn't quite make it on Broadway, but its finale about the granting of civil rights to robots could be taken as Simak's thoughtful approach to race relations. Like Olaf Stapledon, with whom he seems in philosophical accord, Simak represents himself in his fiction as an agnos-tic, searching the limits of imagination for an answer to the riddle of human life. His work reveals a tendency to depart into mysticism, an indication of a fundamental religiosity which Stapledon openly admitted at the very end of his life. The difference is that Simak has not boxed himself in emo-tionally by raging at the inability of his imagination to answer impossibilities. Carefully exploring the richness of human behavior in terms of the encounter with the alien and the unforeseen classics of science fiction continue to come from Simak's typewriter. A Death in the House, published in galaxy magazine (Octo-ber, 1959), belongs in this category, delineating the kindness of an old farmer to a dying creature from another world; it is destined to be reprinted often. One result has been that many new writers, notable among them Chad Oliver, have discovered and learned from the method of Clifford Simak. Yet the truth is that Clifford D. Simak, regardless of his age, works so hard both in technique and substance at the art of being a science-fiction writer that he represents a brighter prospect for the future than any newcomer in sight.

  16 FRITZ LEIBER

  The quotation from St. Matthew, "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house," frequently is a
truism when applied to a man of unusual ability or attainment. With Fritz Leiber, Jr., the reverse seems to be the truth. His unique talents have been recog-nized by the cognoscenti of the science-fiction and fantasy world but a wider renown has been painstakingly slow in coming. From his fellow readers and authors, Fritz Leiber has the following to show: Guest of Honor at the Ninth World Science Fiction Con-vention in New Orleans September 1-3, 1951. A Hugo for the best science-fiction novel of 1958, The Big Time, serialized in the March and April, 1958, issues of GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION.

  An entire issue of fantastic science fiction stories, No-vember, 1959, devoted to five new stories from his type-writer.

  Over 40 short stories included in more than 50 anthologies.

  As if this were not enough, Fritz Leiber, Jr., for decades now, has been regarded as the leading proponent and high priest of a movement to modernize, explain "logically" or "scientifically," all the dark forms and various accouterments of witchcraft and superstition that have so dishonorably been passed down by mankind from generation to generation and that now usually evoke laughter rather than horror in a world unsympathetic to their impotence. The antithesis of the late Pope John the Good, Leiber has sought to assemble a conclave of professional purveyors of literary evil to get them to up-date their paraphernalia and make it more palatable to the doubting body of disbelievers. Failing in that, he has advocated and demonstrated techniques for the symbiotic relationship of witches, familiars, devils, vampires, and haunted houses with science fiction.

  "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em" has been his motto, and he demonstrated the techniques in Gather, Darkness! a novel serialized in the May, June, and July, 1943, issues of astound-ing science-fiction, in which the devil's advocates are the good guys and the priests and angels the bad guys in the fallen world of some postwar future.