Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  Ross Rocklynne popularized this type of story in a series concerning an interplanetary criminal, Deveral, pursued by an interplanetary cop, Colbie. The rogue Deveral always got away by figuring out a tricky scientific puzzle. A typical situation is the one in The Men and the Mirror (astounding science-fiction, July, 1938) in which criminal and cop have to decide how to stop sliding eternally back and forth across a frictionless concave surface on another world. This ap-proach eventually led to Clarke's A Fall of Moon Dust where the problem of finding a ship in a sea of sand and bringing its occupants to the surface makes the puzzle.

  In 1950, Clarke slightly changed direction. He secured a commission to do a short book, Interplanetary Flight, an Introduction to Astronautics, for Temple, London. Though it was mildly technical, it sold well enough to warrant distribu-tion in the United States by Harper. This led to the sugges-tion that he try a longer, more ambitious work, and he began research on The Exploration of Space. A novelette written during this period, Guardian Angel, was considered strong enough by his American agent to aim at a higher-paying market. His agent was told by the editor of one of the better general fiction magazines that he might be interested if the story were trimmed from 15,000 to 10,000 words. James Blish, who was working for the agency at the time, cut the story and added an additional twist concerning an impending Armageddon that he felt would strengthen it. The yarn was nevertheless rejected, but eventu-ally it was sold in its full length to famous fantastic mysteries (April, 1950), with Blish's addition intact. The original version appeared the same year in England in the Winter, 1950, new worlds. The story concerned omnipotent creatures from out of space who stop all war on Earth and get mankind to behave. The big mystery is what they look like, since no one has ever seen them. The punch line comes when they appear, replicas of the Devil. With and without changes the story was a fine job, but the kernel of the idea was taken from John Camp-bell's The Mightiest Machine (astounding stories, Decem-ber, 1934, to April, 1935), in which a race of devillike crea-tures who first lived on Earth migrate to another planet and once again constitute a danger to the mother world.

  Prelude to Space, an ambling novel of the preparation for the first trip to the moon, written the summer of 1947, appeared in galaxy science fiction novels in 1951 and proved to be unexpectedly popular. The science was good and the motives of the characters involved were effectively portrayed, but the book was too close to the present and has already become outdated. We now know that that's not how the first trip to the moon is going to take place at all.

  Another novel, Sands of Mars, published in hardcover by Sidgwick Jackson, London, in 1951, was documentary in approach, possibly inspired by Wreck of the Asteroid by Laurence Manning (wonder stories, December, 1932) and it concerned a science-fiction writer's trip to Mars and his efforts to win the confidence of the pioneers there. Except for the inclusion of several very adult inferences, the book, all protestations to the contrary, should be classed as a juvenile.

  Superiority, a short story published in the August, 1951, issue Of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY

  AND SCIENCE FICTION, brought Clarke prestige when it was made required reading for certain classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy. The story had a moral for those scientists so determined to increase the sophistication of their work that they lose out to those aggressively using conventional methods. The same month, thrilling wonder stories carried Earth-light, the novelette originally written for Gillings'

  short-lived fantasy. This story of a power struggle between the planets to gain control of the mineral resources of the moon contains one of the most vivid and thrilling space battles ever to appear in science fiction, not excepting the interstellar extravaganzas of E. E. Smith and John W. Campbell which it deliberately set out to top. The story was expanded into a full-length novel, published by Ballantine Books in 1955.

  By far the most important event of 1951 for Clarke was the publication of The Exploration of Space by Temple Press Ltd., London. A feature of this book was four full-color paintings by Leslie Carr, derived from drawings by R. A. Smith (who also had some black-and-white astronomical drawings in the volume). Harper's distributed the book in the United States, where it was submitted to the Book-of-the-Month Club for consideration. Basil Davenport, a science-fiction enthusiast and literary critic, was then a reader for the organization. He understood the scope of Clarke's book and highly recommended it to the judges. It happened to be a month when no "important" work appeared, so after some debate the judges decided on a joint selection for the month of July, 1952, one of them The Exploration of Space. A report written by Arthur Jean Cox in the first April, 1952, issue of fantasy times stated that Clarke had re-ceived a $20,000 advance for The Exploration of Space. This was disputed by The Scott Meredith Literary Agency in the second (May, 1952) issue of that magazine as "an understatement." Whatever the amount, Clarke triumphantly sailed to America to pick up his check personally. A hero in the science-fiction world, he was feted at the May 4, 1952, meeting of the Eastern Science Fiction Association in Newark, N. J., and featured at The Third Annual Mid-western Science Fiction Conference in Sharonville, Ohio, on May 12. At these meetings members of the science-fiction community attempted to put their ringer on the quality that had caused Clarke's book to become the success it was. There had been other books on space travel before, some more definitive, embodying much more of the discoveries of research and even more fascinatingly written. Clarke's, they finally decided, was the first to define the "reasons why." He presented the case for space travel not only in terms of mechanics and economics but philosophically, and no one had done that as well before.

  To write Childhood's End, Clarke used Guardian Angel (his own version) as the foundation of the early part of the story and then built from there to a Stapledonian finale in which all mankind unifies into a single intelligence and as-cends the next step in the ladder of evolution—which is to be sent to a spatial heaven in a mystical parallel to religion. Does this then make Clarke a subconscious religionist? As if to anticipate that question, on the copyright page of the book, Clarke prints in lieu of a dedication the disclaimer: "The opinions expressed in this book are not those of the author." Childhood's End (Ballantine Books, 1952) received the major review in the new york times for August 27, 1952.

  Admitting that the ingredients of the novel were science fiction, the reviewer, William Du Bois, acknowledged: "Mr. Clarke has mixed them with a master hand." He. termed the book "a first-rate tour de force that is well worth the attention of every thoughtful citizen in this age of anxiety." In conclusion he stated: "The review can only hint at the stimulation Mr. Clarke's novel offers." If a science-fiction novel had ever received a more favorable review in a publi-cation of major influence it is well hidden. Childhood's End was certainly Clarke's most important and effective work of fiction and was generally recognized as such by a majority of the reviewers.

  Clarke toured the United States. Finally decided he liked Florida and spent some time there skin diving. He married an American girl he had met and known for only a few weeks in 1954, but a separation occurred after a relatively short time.

  Interest in skin diving brought him together with Mike Wilson, a crack photographer who had done work for life magazine in the Orient. They went into partnership engaging in underwater photography along the Great Barrier Reef of Australia and off the coast of Ceylon. Mike Wilson married a Ceylonese girl and settled down in Colombo; Clarke became a citizen of Ceylon and moved in with the Wilsons. He wrote a number of books on skin diving, but his science-fiction novel The Deep Range (Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1957), which was dedicated to Mike Wilson, is one of the finest and most absorbing expositions on future farming of the seas ever done. Impressed by the potentiali-ties, the wall street journal reviewed the book as of interest to the business community (April 2, 1957). The highest honors in the science-fiction world were both presented to Clarke at the 14th World Science Fiction Con-vention in New York in 1956, where he was
guest of honor and also was given the Hugo for the best short science-fiction story of the previous year, The Star (infinity science fiction, November, 1955). This story, dealing with the dis-covery of the remains of the star that became a nova at the time of Christ's birth and thus destroyed a noble race, poses a moral dilemma intended to strike the reader with consider-able impact. Despite almost a clumsy telegraphing of the punch line by the author, it still had the desired effect on its readers.

  A far greater honor for Clarke was the receipt of the 1962 Kalinga Prize, awarded by UNESCO for the populari-zation of science. The honor carries with it $2,800 in cash, but from the prestige standpoint it placed Clarke in company with such past winners as Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and George Gamow. The prize was given in acknowledg-ment of the fact that Clarke's writings in fiction and non-fiction, educating the masses in science, have resulted in sales of over two million books in fifteen languages as well as more than three hundred articles and stories in publications as distinguished as reader's digest, the new york times, horizon, holiday, harper’s, playboy, vogue, and Saturday review. Though there was admittedly an element of good fortune in Clarke's book-of-the-month-club selection, augmented by his own shrewdness in making capital of it, the momentum of his progress, particularly as a writer of fiction, could be sustained only by performance.

  His "failings" as a writer are many in the realm of science fiction. For the most part he was not an innovator. As a literary technician he was outclassed by a number of contem-poraries. His style, by current standards, was not "modern." Yet, people in many countries bought and read him with enthusiasm and hard-headed critics applauded his efforts.

  What is the answer to this seeming paradox?

  In an age fraught with horror and despair he was optimis-tic. Mankind, in his stories, is essentially noble and aspires and triumphs despite all difficulties.

  Behind each of his stories is a thought-provoking concept or philosophy. Whether these are or are not original with him is beside the point; some nugget of thought is always present and they read new to this generation. The ideas are never introduced obliquely or discussed in a blase, over-sophisticat-ed, or matter-of-fact manner, a method indigenous in too much of modern science fiction. Instead, he vests them with all the poetry, wonder, awe, mystery, and adventure that he is capable of conjuring up. Even if it is only the preparation of the first space rocket, he attempts to communicate the richness and implication of an overwhelming experience.

  His science is thorough, authentic, yet easily followed.

  These factors, together with his obvious sincerity, en-tranced the reader and won over the critics. For Arthur C. Clarke, the direction his science-fiction writing was to take was decided at the end of World War II. Consciously or not, he went against the trend. For him, a paraphrase of Robert Frost's famous lines certainly applies: He took the road least traveled by and that made all the difference.

  22 PHILIP JOSE FARMER

  "One of the most extraordinary and significant things about science fiction is its almost total lack of sex, even of fake sex—except, of course, in the 'mad scientist's' operating-chambers particularly prominent in the movie versions," states G. Legman (called "without any reservations whatev-er—the principal living specialist in erotic folklore") in The Horn Book, Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (University Books, 1964).

  As a generality, Legman's point was valid, except that his investigations into science fiction prior to taking up residence on the French Riviera in 1949 were superficial and he appar-ently has lost contact with it altogether since that time. If he had not, he could scarcely have remained oblivious to the impact of a midwesterner with the regionally appropriate name of Farmer on the field of science fiction with a short novel, The Lovers (startling stories, August, 1952), which fathered a brief but traumatic revolution contributing toward the maturation of science fiction.

  An introductory blurb, "Entrance Cue," by Samuel Mines, editor of startling stories, said of The Lovers:

  "We think this story is a delicate and beautiful, yet powerful and shock-ing piece of work. . . . We think that Philip Jose Farmer is the find of the year." To his readers, in the department "The Ether Vibrates," he made a further telling point: ". . . we think The Lovers is an important story. Important not necessarily because it is great literature but because it will make a lot of fine writers sit up and be quoted as blurting: 'My gosh, I didn't know we could do anything like that in science fiction!' or words to that effect." He was, from the vantage of hindsight, 100 per cent right.

  The revolutionary approach in The Lovers grew from the following story line. An Earth ship lands on a planet where the manlike dominating species has evolved from insect forms. A "human" race once lived there, too, infiltrated by a parasitic form of insect that grew into the precise form of a woman. These parasites, the lalitha, were all female and could breed only by mating with a human male. After preg-nancy, the mother would die and the larvae would feed off her flesh until mature enough to emerge. It was discovered by the lalitha that the heavy drinking of a foul-smelling liquor made from beetle juice, prevented pregnancy. When an Earthman, Yarrow, unaware of the true nature of the lalitha, enters into an affair with one named Jeannette he becomes so fond of her that he waters her beetle juice, to cure her of what he thinks is a leaning toward alcoholism. The result is conception and her death. This love story was clothed in unparallelled richness of background and related with a fascinating, absorbing literary technique. The old saw, "If you borrow from one author it's plagiarism, but if you borrow from many it's research," has an application here. Farmer owes a debt to easily a score of writers, but what he does with the elements he utilizes be-comes singularly and uniquely his own. The smoothly handled incorporation of sex in the story he may have picked up from L. Sprague de Camp, whose work he admired and whose Rogue Queen, describing the methods of procreation and social mores in a humanoid society pat-terned after the bees, had appeared in a Doubleday book in the spring of 1951. Many of the characteristics of the Wogs, the dominant insect race of the alien planet, were taken from L. Frank Baum's The Marvelous Land of Oz, which had a famed character named The Woggle Bug. Further evidence of the Baum influence is apparent in the planet's name: Ozagen. The treatment of the alien creatures owes much to Stanley G. Weinbaum. The stylistic modernity and the care-ful build-up of future civilizations is reminiscent of Robert A. Heinlein. To say all this is no more disparaging than to say that Bradbury exhibits a paradoxical blend of the styles of Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, for what Bradbury has done with his method is distinctly his own, and what Farmer has homogenized from his sources represents a per-sonal achievement.

  Not unexpectedly, it was not the end result that other science-fiction writers admired in Farmer, but merely the sensationalism of his using biological sex as his central theme. This represented to them the breaking of a barrier and their reaction was immediate.

  A California author, Sherwood Springer, reading The Lov-ers, rushed a story he had written over a year previously to editor Mines. It was published as No Land of Nod in the December, 1952, thrilling wonder stories and concerned the problem of the continuation of the race when the last man and woman on Earth are father and daughter. The decision is eventually made by the daughter as it was by Lot's offspring in Genesis.

  The reverse situation appears when the last woman on earth, pregnant, realizes she must have a boy if the race is to continue, in a story by Wallace West, appropriately titled Eddie for Short (amazing stories, December, 1953).

  From that point on, science-fiction writers decided to be-come really daring. At the forefront was Theodore Sturgeon, with The World Well Lost (universe science fiction, June, 1953) in which two lovebirds from another planet turn out to be homosexuals; and, for good measure, he con-tributed The Wages of Synergy, (startling stories, August, 1953) which starts with the shocked reaction of a woman whose lover dies while they are amatorily involved. Some years later he would write Affair with a
Green Monkey (venture science fiction, May, 1957) which was little more than an adroitly phrased dirty joke. It is possible that the field was moving in that direction anyway, and that The Lovers merely was the first of an inevitable trend. Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man (galaxy science fiction, January-February-March, 1951) had made it very clear that the world of tomorrow would know what sex was all about, and Richard Matheson, in his novelette Lover When You're Near Me (galaxy science fiction, May, 1952), had centered his story around the tele-pathic seduction of an Earthman by an alien female physical-ly abhorrent to him.

  Yet, despite this, science fiction is surpassed in prudery only by the Frank Merriwell stories. Even in hard-cover books, where a higher price made an adult audience certain, sex has not been too common in science fiction. It does appear as a prime motivator in S. Fowler Wright's novel Deluge (1928), where surviving males, after a worldwide inunda-tion, battle for the possession of females. It probably con-tributed as much to the sale of Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley as the author's philosophy, what with the encouragement of erotic play in children, the feelies replacing talking pictures and the popular pastime of Orgy Porgy. Even the philosophy of the novel was deeply concerned with sex as related to reproduction. Far more serious and philosophical, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1931) projected the history of mankind's future for hundreds of millions of years to come, and made a point of detailing the sexual changes and mores in the evolving race. Later, in Sirius (1944), Stapledon uses a tragic relationship, between a mutated dog of human-level intelligence and a girl, as a moving alle-gory. However, even as early as 1930, hard-cover books no longer represented the mainstream of science fiction, but were already on the fringe. The body of science fiction, the real area of development, was in such magazines as amazing STORIES, WONDER STORIES, and ASTOUNDING STORIES, in which everything was rigidly puritanical. The female of the species, when present at all, was usually a professor's daugh-ter whose prime function was to be captured by and be rescued from some bug-eyed monster. Some psychologists have tried to read sexual implications into that plot device, but it is probable the readers were more correct than naive when they assumed that the beast was hungry.