Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  Among the rare and "racy" moments that diligent research might uncover was an episode in Via the Hewitt Ray by a woman author, M. F. Rupert, published in the Spring, 1930, science wonder quarterly. A ray takes Lucille Hewitt, daughter of its inventor, into the fourth dimension. There, the dominant civilization is entirely female, except for a few males permitted to live for breeding purposes. A little ques-tioning, however, reveals to Miss Hewitt the scandalous fact that "the males whose intelligence average was below our mental standard but who had physical beauty were made sterile by a special process and housed on the thirteenth tier."

  "But you don't need these sterile men," Lucille Hewitt points out. "Why do you keep them?"

  "We changed a lot of things," she is candidly told, "but we were unable, without danger to the future of our race, to change the fundamentals of natural instincts. When we wom-en have borne two children to the race we are not allowed to reproduce a third time. Nevertheless the old biological urge returns and then we find use for the sterile male."

  "But that is downright immoral," Lucille objects.

  Her guide refuses to be trapped in a discussion on morality and finally puts her down with the reply:

  "Well, to you, with your present standard of morals it isn't right, but to us it is a highly efficient manner of settling our difficulties."

  There were no repercussions from science wonder quar-terly readers to that "salacious" exchange, possibly because it comprised only a few paragraphs in an issue that otherwise lived up to the highest standards of Fred Fearnot.

  The renamed wonder stories quarterly didn't get away with a "zippy" approach a second time, when it published a gay satiric frolic by Don M. Lemon, The Scarlet Planet, in the Winter, 1931, number. Thousands of girls inhabit a scarlet planet on which an Earth ship lands, and thousands more rest in underground vaults in suspended animation. Some of them are blood-sucking vampires, others half-snake and half-women manufacturing a narcotic gas from the evaporation of their tears. The Earthmen don't care; they romp around the world with a leer in their eyes and some very obvious banter on their lips. Despite the fact that they make honest women out of two of the girls at the end of the novel, the readers didn't take to men who thought that way. Don M. Lemon had contributed fantasies to periodicals like all-story magazine since 1905, but this was to be his first and last appearance in a science-fiction publication.

  Apart from a few test-tube babies, the magazines steered remarkably clear of sex until the entrance of marvel science stories, with its first number dated August, 1938. The editor, Robert O. Erisman, gave the field one of the finest underground civilization novels of all time, Survival by Arthur J. Burks, but he also had decided that the opportunity was present for a bit of titillation. Henry Kuttner, who was eventually to become a major modern shaper of science fiction, had submitted several action potboilers. Erisman told him he would take them if some risque passages, in the manner of horror tales and terror tales, which mixed sex and sadism, were interpolated. Kuttner revised to this formula four stories under his own and pen names in the first two issues. The howls of protest were such that all sex was dropped with the third issue of the magazine and the name of Henry Kuttner was so discredited in science fiction that it took him five years to reestablish his standing, and then under pen names.

  When the competition of a flood of new science-fiction magazines in 1939 put marvel science stories into finan-cial trouble, it changed its name to marvel tales with the December, 1939, issue and switched to a straight formula of sadism and sex. Again the policy lasted only two issues, published six months apart, and the magazine altered its title to marvel stories and a "no funny business" policy with its November, 1940, issue.

  There were those who felt that the ban on sex was wrong. Writing in the December, 1945, fantasy times, Thomas S. Gardner, Ph.D., said: "Sex should be incorporated into science fiction as a standard life pattern and treated from all phases just as political systems are discussed. . . . But just mention sex and one has not only a figurative fight but a literal fight on his hands. Sex is very, very tabu, and can cause the most violent disagreements possible. Just why that is so is hard to understand." G. Legman, erotica authority, presented his theory. "The reason for this (omission of sex from science fiction) is neither due to oversight nor external censorship, but the fact that the largest percentage of the audience for the echt-pulp science-fiction literature is composed of adolescent boys (who continue reading it even after they are grown up), who are terrified of women, sex, and pubic hair." The foregoing might explain the policy that kept sex out of science fiction, but it fails to explain the absolute rejection of such material until Philip Jose Farmer's The Lovers. The answer most probably is that science fiction is a literature of ideas. The people who read it are entertained and even find escape through mental stimulation. Sex, vulgar or artistic, is available to them in countless forms if they wish it, but the type of intellectual speculation they enjoy is presented only in science fiction. Farmer's stories were scientifically based on biology which happened to involve sex. The stories could not have been written without the sexual elements. Not only was the sex integral to the story, but the concepts were entirely new. Because the presentation of thought-provoking speculation, sex or otherwise, is a legitimate function of science fiction, Farmer succeeded. In doing so, he established a precedent and thereby became one of the prime movers of modern science fiction.

  The author of The Lovers was christened Philip Jose Farmer after his birth, January 26, 1918, in North Terre Haute, Indiana. The "Jose" was the first name of his father's mother and the change to "Jose" was made by Philip him-self, who resented being labeled for a woman and correctly decided it would lend color to the drabness of his last name, Farmer. Actually, his father was born George Park, but he adopted the last name of a relative who raised him. The father was an electrical power engineer by profession, a practicing Christian Scientist of Irish, English, and Dutch extraction. The mother, Lucille Theodora Jackson, was of German, Cherokee, Scotch and English background and be-came a Christian Scientist after marriage. One of five children, Philip had a happy and normal childhood. Even during the Depression, the family was ade-quately fed, clothed, and housed. His problem was that, despite participation in high school dramatics and the fact that he was outstanding at football, track, and the broad jump, Philip suffered from a distinct inferiority complex and an extra-rigid puritanical streak.

  His spare time was heavily occupied with reading. Already Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, A. Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, and Carl H. Claudy were at the top of his list, and when he spotted the first (June, 1929) issue of science wonder stories it was as if Diogenes had found a reason to blow out his lamp. His first job, in 1935 and 1936, was summer work as a ground man for Illinois Central Power and Light, Peoria, where his father was employed as engineer and supervisor. He tried attending Bradley College during 1936-37 and then dropped out for full-time work as a ground man. He reen-tered Bradley in 1940, and there he met Bette Virginia Andre, then a freshman. They were married the spring of 1941. A first child, Philip Laird, was born in 1942 and a second, Kristen, in 1945. To support his family, he worked eleven straight years from mid-1940 as a laborer, billet-chopper, and inspector for Keystone Steel & Wire, Barton-ville, Illinois. It took him until 1950, attending nights, to secure his B.A. in English from Bradley. Farmer had written imaginatively and at length since his fifth grade. His early efforts were in the heroic tradition, placed in the eras of the Romans and the Vikings with an occasional venture in the African and Malayan jungles. Farmer wrote and had rejected by astounding science-fiction two short stories highly imitative of Stanley G. Wein-baum. A science-fiction novel had been returned from argosy with a polite letter. Controversial stories submitted to the Saturday evening post and good housekeeping were "hurled back."

  Nevertheless, the first tale was a good one. He had written a story called O'Brien and Obrenov, in which American and Russian soldiers jointly occupy a German tow
n. They draw a chalk mark through the center of it separating zones of influence. A Nazi war criminal they flush out, when subdued, is flat on his back across the division line. He is held supine four days while O'Brien and Obrenov, the American and Russian commanders, negotiate over who is to claim him. The matter is solved when a statue of Goethe, with a sword in his hand, is pushed over, splitting the prisoner's head open. The Saturday evening post offered to buy the story if a drunk scene were excised. Farmer refused and sent it to argosy. They didn't want it, but passed it on to their compan-ion magazine, adventure, where it was purchased by editor Kenneth White and run in the March, 1946, number. Two more tries at adventure were refused. Farmer decided he just didn't have it and went back to working hard in the steel mill days and reading omnivorously nights.

  One evening in 1951, something in a book on biology he was going through reminded him of another volume he had recently read on ant parasites. He vividly recalled the use of the subject matter in Bob Olsen's The Ant with a Human Soul (in amazing stories quarterly for Spring-Summer, 1932). He began to amplify possibilities and the next he knew he was immersed in writing the first draft of The Lovers. The final version was turned down by John Campbell at astounding science-fiction as "nauseating." H. L. Gold of galaxy science fiction sent it back and later offered divers justifications, including the fear that the story supposi-tion of the rise of Israel to world power and the springing up of a new religion led by a half-Jewish character might be misunderstood. He also felt the story should have been rewritten in the present with the lalitha as historical influ-ences on earth.

  When the story was sent to startling stories, it was first read by assistant editor Jerome Bixby, a well-known author in his own right, who enthusiastically recommended it to Sam Mines, the editor, and science-fiction history was in the making.

  A man with a T-bone steak on his mind is not likely to be distracted by the offer of crepes suzettes, no matter how tasty. So it was that Farmer's next story, a short titled Sail On! Sail On!, was dismissed by readers as an appetizer rather than heartier fare.

  That was a mistake.

  Sail On! Sail On! is a story of parallel worlds, where Ptolemy is right. Where Roger Bacon is encouraged by the Church and begins an age of invention including electricity, radio, and the electric light. Where Columbus is turned down by Queen Isabella of Spain and sent out by the Church instead. Where frantic messages from outer space are decod-ed too late to prevent the ships from sailing off the edge of the Earth. Sail On! Sail On! is a classic, not merely because of its clever ending, but because in plan and execution it is no less than brilliant. Few who have read the story are likely to forget the punch line: "They had run out of horizon."

  The lack of response did not discourage Farmer. The readers' columns of startling stories were still full of letters of comment on The Lovers, most of them highly laudatory. Shasta Publishers, a Chicago firm specializing in science fiction, had contracted to put The Lovers out in book form. Hugo Gernsback, who had returned to science-fiction publishing with science-fiction plus, a slick-paper, large-size magazine, solicited stories from the new sensation. Farm-er was feeling no pain.

  On rush order Farmer turned out a novelette for science-fiction plus called The Bite of the Asp, in which the protag-onist is injected with a protein molecule which causes his body to expel matter that arouses an unreasoning fear in any living creature approaching too closely. Hastily written, the story required rewriting. When finally published as The Biolog-ical Revolt in the first issue of science-fiction plus, March, 1953, the work was badly mangled editorially. Despite this, it won an overwhelming first place in readers' preference from a return of 2,000 return-postage cards bound into the magazine. The anger Farmer felt at the published version of The Biological Revolt was quickly dissipated by the reader reac-tion to his novelette, Mother, which appeared at almost the same time in the April, 1953, thrilling wonder stories. In many ways this story was even better than The Lovers. From reading a criticism of Freud, Farmer had conceived of a plot involving a literal return to the womb. The "womb," in this case, is a tremendous otherworldly female, outwardly resem-bling a rock-encrusted hill, forever stationary, and able to reproduce only by attracting roving beasts with blasts of appropriate mating scents. Any moving creature that gets close is seized and dragged into a gigantic womb. When the trapped animal attempts to claw its way out of a prison of flesh and muscle, the irritation it produces on the walls provides the stimulus for conception. Having performed its function, it is then digested.

  Mother is the story of an Earthman, always dependent on his mother, who is thus trapped by one of the organisms, communicates with the organism that has captured him, and then makes the gigantic womb his permanent home.

  The announcement that Moth and Rust, a sequel to The Lovers, would appear in the June, 1953, startling stories was big news in the science-fiction world. The story, howev-er, substantially longer than The Lovers, received only a lukewarm reception. It was not a sequel at all. The only points of similarity were that it took place in the Earth culture that had made contact with the Wogs and the lalitha. Actually, it is a fast-moving cloak-and-dagger novel of the future, comparable in theme to 1984. Isolating and outlining the nature of the sex in the story would suggest pornography, but in context it must have proved rather disappointing to those who read the novel for kicks. Religion rather than sex is the major story ingredient. Farmer explores the rise and nature of hypothetical new religions of the future with the same scientific objectivity with which he previously outlined the sex life of aliens. His sex stories are no more off-color than his religious prognostications are blasphemous, which is not at all. This was particularly true of his handling of Strange Compulsion (science-fiction plus, October, 1953) in which the theme of possible involuntary incest brought about through parasite infestation was handled so clinically that it almost slowed the story to a stop.

  By the time of the 11th Annual World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia, September 6, 1953, Philip Jose Farmer seemed to be riding on the crest of a wave. He was presented with the first of the series of awards later to become known as Hugos as the best new science-fiction author of 1952. Appropriately enough, the subject of his talk that day was "Science Fiction and the Kinsey Report." Startling stories had announced that it was going to run its first serial novel ever, an 80,000-worder by Farmer entitled A Beast of the Fields. The story was paid for but never published, because startling stories had become a bi-monthly. The action takes place fifty years hence on a planet around a nearby star. "The hero is a descendant of one of the members of the so-called Lost Colony of Roanoke, Virginia, having been forcibly removed from North America, along with the baby Virginia Dare, and trans-planted to the far-off planet," according to the author's summary.

  The most dramatic event of the year for Farmer proved to be a contest sponsored by Shasta Publishers, offering $1,000 for the best new novel submitted, plus $3,000 for paperback rights from Pocket Books, Inc. Farmer spent every working hour for thirty days producing a 100,000-word novel, I Owe for the Flesh. The plot dealt with all of humanity being resurrected along the banks of a river ten million miles long on a faraway planet, with Sir Richard Francis Burton brought to life as the major character. Sent in just under the wire, I Owe for the Flesh won the contest, beating out, among others, The Power by Frank M. Robinson, which since has become, financially, one of the most successful contemporary science-fiction novels. Ecstatic, Farmer left Peoria for Chicago to be photographed with the top men of Shasta and the vice president of Pocket Books, Inc.

  In the early flush of accomplishment, he threw up his job at Keystone Steel & Wire for full-time writing. He secured an agent to help him sell to the big-time markets, and when he sold Queen of the Deep to argosy (March, 1954), concern-ing a robot Russian submarine which captures an American and then is outdone in a game of wits, man against machine, it appeared that he was really on his way. This story is better known as Son, under which title it appeared in
the 1960 Ballantine Books collection of Farmer's stories, Strange Rela-tions.

  Undeterred by a number of rejections, he made the pages of the magazine of fantasy and science fiction with Attitudes, the first of a series of tales about a space priest named Father John Carmody, who was to become a popular character.

  But then Shasta asserted Pocket Books was not satisfied with I Owe for the Flesh and had requested a revision. This done, a second rewriting was asked for. Because of the novel's length, months passed by and no money came in. Payments on the mortgage fell in arrears. Finally, Farmer had his agent get in touch with Pocket Books to find out just what it was they wanted. He learned that they had never asked for any rewriting, that they had sent their $3,000 through some time back and were waiting for hard-cover publication. Full payment never came through and the book was never pub-lished because Shasta foundered. Farmer lost his house, his wife became ill, and, in desperation, he secured a job with a local dairy. His literary career seemed to have blown up in his face. Depressed, he ceased writing. Stories continued to appear through 1954, but they had been previously writ-ten.

  Of special interest was a long novelette, Rastignac the Devil, which was published in the May, 1954, issue of Leo Margulies' new magazine, fantastic universe. Actually this story was related to The Lovers, for the protagonist, Rasti-gnac, will eventually become the sire of Jeannette, the unfor-tunate lalitha who died for the love of Earthman Yarrow. Like More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, it explores the area of gestalt relationships, in this case made possible by "skins," living organisms voluntarily worn by the inhabitants of the planet New Gaul which keep them attuned to other wearers and prick them like a physical conscience when they do wrong.