Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  She put down the bottle. Then she did something which perhaps few of the men she had listened to through the years could have done. She moved without hurry or sign of disturbance on a tour about the room. And, although she approached the bed she did not touch the jewels. She could not force herself to that. It took her five minutes to play out her innocence and unconcern. Then it was Bat who decided the issue.

  He leaped from the bed and escorted something to the door, remaining a careful distance behind. Then he mewed loudly twice. Steena followed him and opened the door wider.

  Bat went straight on down the corridor, as intent as a hound on the warmest of scents. Steena strolled behind him, holding her pace to the unhurried gait of an explorer. What sped before them both was invisible to her but Bat was never baffled by it.

  They must have gone into the control cabin almost on the heels of the unseen—if the unseen had heels, which there was good reason to doubt—for Bat crouched just within the doorway and refused to move on. Steena looked down the length of the instrument panels and officers’ station-seats to where Cliff Moran worked. On the heavy carpet her boots made no sound and he did not glance up but sat humming through set teeth as he tested the tardy and reluctant responses to buttons which had not been pushed in years.

  To human eyes they were alone in the cabin. But Bat still followed a moving something with his gaze. And it was something which he had at last made up his mind to distrust and dislike. For now he took a step or two forward and spat—his loathing made plain by every raised hair along his spine. And in that same moment Steena saw a flicker—a flicker of vague outline against Cliff’s hunched shoulders as if the invisible one had crossed the space between them.

  But why had it been revealed against Cliff and not against the back of one of the seats or against the panels, the walls of the corridor or the cover of the bed where it had reclined and played with its loot? What could Bat see?

  The storehouse memory that had served Steena so well through the years clicked open a half-forgotten door. With one swift motion she tore loose her spaceall and flung the baggy garment across the back of the nearest seat.

  Bat was snarling now, emitting the throaty rising cry that was his hunting song. But he was edging back, back toward Steena’s feet, shrinking from something he could not fight but which he faced defiantly. If he could draw it after him, past that dangling spaceall.… He had to—it was their only chance.

  “What the.…” Cliff had come out of his seat and was staring at them.

  What he saw must have been weird enough. Steena, bare-armed and shouldered, her usually stiffly-netted hair falling wildly down her back, Steena watching empty space with narrowed eyes and set mouth, calculating a single wild chance. Bat, crouched on his belly, retreating from thin air step by step and wailing like a demon.

  “Toss me your blaster.” Steena gave the order calmly—as if they still sat at their table in the Rigel Royal.

  And as quietly Cliff obeyed. She caught the small weapon out of the air with a steady hand—caught and leveled it.

  “Stay just where you are!” she warned. “Back, Bat, bring it back!”

  With a last throat-splitting screech of rage and hate, Bat twisted to safety between her boots. She pressed with thumb and forefinger, firing at the spacealls. The material turned to powdery flakes of ash—except for certain bits which still flapped from the scorched seat—as if something had protected them from the force of the blast. Bat sprang straight up in the air with a scream that tore their ears.

  “What…?” began Cliff again.

  Steena made a warning motion with her left hand. “Wait!”

  She was still tense, still watching Bat. The cat dashed madly around the cabin twice, running crazily with white-ringed eyes and flecks of foam on his muzzle. Then he stopped abruptly in the doorway, stopped and looked back over his shoulder for a long silent moment. He sniffed delicately.

  Steena and Cliff could smell it too now, a thick oily stench which was not the usual odor left by an exploding blaster-shell.

  Bat came back, treading daintily across the carpet, almost on the tips of his paws. He raised his head as he passed Steena and then he went confidently beyond to sniff, to sniff and spit twice at the unburned strips of the spaceall. Having thus paid his respects to the late enemy he sat down calmly and set to washing his fur with deliberation. Steena sighed once and dropped into the navigator’s seat.

  “Maybe now you’ll tell me what in the hell’s happened?” Cliff exploded as he took the blaster out of her hand.

  “Gray,” she said dazedly, “it must have been gray—or I couldn’t have seen it like that. I’m colorblind, you see. I can see only shades of gray—my whole world is gray. Like Bat’s—his world is gray too—all gray. But he’s been compensated for he can see above and below our range of color vibrations and—apparently—so can I!”

  Her voice quavered and she raised her chin with a new air Cliff had never seen before—a sort of proud acceptance. She pushed back her wandering hair, but she made no move to imprison it under the heavy net again.

  “That is why I saw the thing when it crossed between us. Against your spaceall it was another shade of gray—an outline. So I put out mine and waited for it to show against that—it was our only chance, Cliff.

  “It was curious at first, I think, and it knew we couldn’t see it—which is why it waited to attack. But when Bat’s actions gave it away it moved. So I waited to see that flicker against the spaceall and then I let him have it. It’s really very simple.…”

  Cliff laughed a bit shakily. “But what was this gray thing? I don’t get it.”

  “I think it was what made the Empress a derelict. Something out of space, maybe, or from another world somewhere.” She waved her hands. “It’s invisible because it’s a color beyond our range of sight. It must have stayed in here all these years. And it kills—it must—when its curiosity is satisfied.” Swiftly she described the scene in the cabin and the strange behavior of the gem pile which had betrayed the creature to her.

  Cliff did not return his blaster to its holder. “Any more of them on board, d’you think?” He didn’t look pleased at the prospect.

  Steena turned to Bat. He was paying particular attention to the space between two front toes in the process of a complete bath. “I don’t think so. But Bat will tell us if there are. He can see them clearly, I believe.”

  But there weren’t any more and two weeks later Cliff, Steena and Bat brought the Empress into the Lunar quarantine station. And that is the end of Steena’s story because, as we have been told, happy marriages need no chronicles. And Steena had found someone who knew of her gray world and did not find it too hard to share with her—someone besides Bat. It turned out to be a real love match.

  The last time I saw her she was wrapped in a flame-red cloak from the looms of Rigel and wore a fortune in Jovan rubies blazing on her wrists. Cliff was flipping a three-figure credit bill to a waiter. And Bat had a row of Vernal juice glasses set up before him. Just a little family party out on the town.

  * * * *

  Copyright © 1953 by Andre Norton.

  YOUNG ADULT SCIENCE FICTION, by Carol Franko

  Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once offered an appealing definition of science fiction: “[A] good science-fiction story is a story about human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, that would not have happened at all without its science content” (qtd. in McGregor 225). Sturgeon’s insistence on “human” problems and solutions complements how publishers and educators think about science fiction written for young adults: Not only must the science be accessible, but as Joe Sutliff Sanders notes, the structure and themes of YA SF must be “relevant to the young adults of its period” which could mean emphasizing coming of age plots (442). Yet the “science content” is also necessary. Of relevance to adolescent cognitive development is SF’s combination of explaining worlds changed by scientific development with immersing readers in them, thus
challenging readers to discover the logic of the unfamiliar setting (compare Sanders with Mendlesohn, Inter-Galactic).

  Young adult science fiction, or YA SF for short, refers to science fiction written and published for readers of about thirteen years old and up. From the nineteenth century and continuing at least through the 1950s, the assumed reader was defined by gender as well as age: Boys were the main target audience. Many girls still discovered science fiction, and in recent decades authors have made the genre much more welcoming to female readers. Why should adult readers of SF care about SF written for adolescents? While it can be fun to study the history of any field that one likes, here the rewards include finding more good science fiction to read and enjoy.

  Some Highlights of the History of YA SF

  Since the nineteenth into the twentieth century teens have read science fiction by Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and in series works aimed at youth readership. According to the Cambridge Guide to Children’s Books in English, two works popular with youth in the early twentieth century were Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1898) (Watson 633); these two still influence YA SF in the twenty-first century. Also available starting in the late nineteenth century were series featuring “science adventure stories” (Molson and Miles 394) with boy inventors often their protagonists. These series include the Frank Reade and Frank Reade, junior stories; the Great Marvel books; and the first Tom Swift series. Such stories dramatized “both realistic and futuristic applications of science” while offering readers wonderfully competent protagonists with whom to identify (Molson “American…” 19).

  The 1950s mark a new era. Scholars and fans agree that Robert A. Heinlein’s science fiction novels written for “juveniles” (as young adult readers used to be termed) are milestones because of their high quality as science fiction; their enduring market success; and their success in persuading the children’s literature community (teachers, librarians, publishers) that science fiction can be an educational and positive reading experience for young adults. Beginning with Rocket Ship Galileo in 1947 and ending with Have Space Suit—Will Travel in 1958, Heinlein published twelve novels with Charles Scribner’s Sons. C.W. Sullivan explains that Heinlein “reinvented” series science fiction with such innovations as presenting “new main characters and settings” in each book and incorporating an overall story arc for the series that echoes American history (“Robert A. Heinlein” 68). Sullivan emphasizes that Heinlein portrays aliens freshly and creates female characters “unusual for science fiction of that time” (68). For contemporary readers, Heinlein’s Scribner novels mix 1950s gender roles with characters that challenge them. Thus Citizen of the Galaxy has a woman anthropologist, Red Planet has a girl who is a better shot than her brother, and Have Space Suit—Will Travel features a brilliant, courageous female sidekick who saves the life of the male protagonist. Twenty-first century readers may also be challenged by Heinlein’s optimism over humanity’s mission to conquer space, or by the sometimes ruthless attitudes expressed. Yet, even when characters make categorical statements about, for example, what kind of people are truly fit to survive (chapter seven, Have Space Suit—Will Travel), these novels have an open attitude and a subsequent chapter that invites readers to keep thinking.

  Heinlein insisted on never writing down to teens; in fact, he declared they were more open than adults to difficult concepts and strange vocabulary (Franklin 74). When Heinlein elaborated in a draft of Red Planet on the procreation of the Martians, his Scribner editor objected that it would be deemed inappropriate for the target audience. Such conflicts spurred Heinlein’s thinking about science fiction. In a “grumbling” letter to his agent he contrasted an outdated definition of the genre with where it could go:

  “Science fiction … consists of stories about the wonderful machines of the future.” [This] definition is all right as far as it goes, but it … includes only that portion [of the field]… which has been heavily overworked .… Speculative fiction (I prefer that term to science fiction) is also concerned with sociology, psychology, esoteric aspects of biology, impact of terrestrial culture on the other cultures we may encounter when we conquer space, etc., without end. (Grumbles 49)

  Heinlein’s second YA novel, Space Cadet (1948), shapes adventures by such topics while positing a Space Academy grounded in speculation of how earth might avoid nuclear warfare in an impartial (and frightening) way. Space Cadet loosely inspired other YA SF like Carey Rockwell’s Tom Corbett: Space Cadet books and the U.S. television series of the same name which ran from 1950–55. Heinlein’s dramatizing of school traditions and dangerous studies may have helped to inspire YA fantasy’s school for wizards stories, beginning with Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books and culminating in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.

  Heinlein was soon joined by other talented writers, notably Andre Norton (pseudonym of Alice Mary Norton, 1912–2005) who wrote a variety of YA SF and fantasy series, including Star Ka’at, featuring catlike aliens and coauthored with Dorothy Madlee. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America created an award honoring Norton’s remarkable career: the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy. I have fond memories of Norton’s Beastmaster, featuring the Dineh (Navajo) hero, Hosteen Storm, who works with mutated animals on a far planet. In works like Star Man’s Son 2250 A.D., Norton skillfully combines young adult themes like rebellion with science fictional elements like mutation resulting from nuclear war. The science fiction elements serve both as causes for alienation and as “assets” in hostile new environments (Sullivan “Introduction” 2). In her recent book on YA SF, Farah Mendlesohn discusses Norton with Heinlein and presents the two as exemplary of the best in the genre. Mendlesohn includes an impressive list of themes shared by Heinlein’s and Norton’s novels, including: “navigation,…constitution- making,…migration conflicts, religion, scientific thinking, planetary exploration, [and] the politics of colonization” (Inter-Galactic 16).

  The 1960s through the 1980s show writers winning awards while fashioning distinctive blends of young adult stories of conflict and growth with science fictional themes. Alan Nourse’s novels combining suspense with speculation about future medicine (as in The Mercy Men, 1968) are highly regarded. In the 1970s Anne McCaffrey added YA volumes to her Pern world, beginning with Dragonsong (1976), a “sensitive and somewhat unconventional” girl’s coming of age (Molson and Miles 433). John Christopher’s popular Tripod trilogy begins with The White Mountains (1967) and its “convincing and troubling” depiction of England after an alien invasion (Molson and Miles 412). One of Peter Dickinson’s outstanding works is Eva (1989 Boston Globe Horn Book winner), a novel called “emotionally shocking and intellectually provocative” in its working out of hybrid human and chimpanzee personhood for a 13-year-old girl whose memory is salvaged after a car accident (Barron 185). Monica Hughes received the Canadian Council Children’s Literature Prize for The Guardian of Isis (1982). Also deserving particular mention is author H. M. Hoover. One of her novels about planetary colonization, Another Heaven, Another Earth (1981), shows a scientific and cultural adventurousness comparable to Heinlein but distinctive in Hoover’s combination of suspense and pathos. In Australian YA SF, the 1980s show authors such as Gillian Rubinstein and John Marsden receiving critical acclaim by having their works shortlisted for Children’s Book of the Year (Foster 90–94).

  Madeleine L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time (1963 Newbery winner; first novel in L’Engle’s Time Trilogy) blends “science and mythology, fantasy and realism, philosophy and radical theology” with a “nontraditional female hero” (Smedman 66). The mysterious characters Mrs. Who, Mrs. What, and Mrs. Which communicate through quotations with humans, and thus L’Engle includes her take on a practice Heinlein employed: incorporating references that challenge readers to participate in cultural history (see Erisman; also Sullivan, “Robert A. Heinlein”). Another of L’Engle’s
themes involves children possessing special sensory abilities which may be an evolutionary potential for humans. Two other authors who explore the “special children” motif are William Sleator, in The Green Futures of Tycho, and Virginia Hamilton in her Justice Cycle novels, which are the first African-American authored YA SF series about African-American characters (Sand and Frank 99 n.4). Sleator has written many intriguing novels. The Green Futures of Tycho (1981) dares readers to sort out multiplying futures and ethical dilemmas when Tycho’s use of an alien-made time travel device is complicated by his sibling rivalries and the apparent agenda of the device. Hamilton’s Justice and Her Brothers (1978) also exemplifies the cognitive work-as-play that YA SF can offer. With thematic resemblance to adult SF like More Than Human (by Theodore Sturgeon; 1953), the novel unfolds the telepathic powers emerging in several teens in a rural community. Partial explanations linked to genetics come late, and most often Justice’s expanding “power of observing and knowing through the senses” (Hamilton 209) is suggestively shown.

  Bioengineering themes are prominent in the YA SF of the 1990s and into the current century. Such stories often depict a science-fictionally warped coming of age in a near-future Earth. A thoughtful treatment of cloning, combined with a dystopian vision of a future Mexico and U.S. in light of the drug wars is found in Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion (2002). Stories that approach biotechnological themes with an eye for positive as well as disturbing potential include Margaret Peterson Haddix’s Turnabout (2000), Ann Halam’s Dr. Franklin’s Island (2002), and Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox (2008)—whose topical interest includes the complex distribution of health care in a near future and identity questions in relation to medical advances. Other YA SF of the 1990s, such as Charles Sheffield’s Jupiter series, take protagonists back into space, and are thus reminiscent of Heinlein and Norton.