Sound does have the advantage of being able to diffract around obstacles, so that straight-line connection is not needed; light (that is, light visible to human beings) is of such short wavelength that diffraction effects are minor. This means that the precise direction of origin of a sound ray cannot be well determined, while a good eye can measure light's direction to a small fraction of a degree. On Earth, we both eat and keep this particular piece of cake, since we have evolved both sight and hearing.
Scent seems to have all the disadvantages and none of the advantages, as a long-range sense. However, under special circumstances even a modified nose may fill the need. In a story of my own some years ago ("Uncommon Sense," Astounding Science Fiction, September 1945), I assumed an airless planet, so that molecules could diffuse in nearly straight lines. The local sense organs were basically pinhole cameras, with the retinal mosaic formed of olfactory cells. Since the beings in question were not intelligent, the question of what sort of universe they believed in did not arise.
Granting the intelligence, it would have been—would still be, indeed—interesting to work out their cosmology. Naturally, the first few hours are spent wondering whether and how they could fill the intellectual gaps imposed by their lack of sight and hearing. Then, of course, the intelligent speculator starts wondering what essential details are missing from our concept of the universe, because of our lack of the sense of (you name it). This, for what my opinion is worth, is one of the best philosophical excuses for the practice of science fiction—if an excuse is needed. The molecule-seers presumably lack all astronomical data; what are we missing? This question, I hope I needn't add, is not an excuse to go off on a mystical kick, though it is one which the mystics are quite reasonably fond of asking (and then answering with their own version of Truth). The human species has, as a matter of fact, done a rather impressive job of overcoming its sensory limitations, though I see no way of ever being sure when the job is done.
Philosophy aside, there are many more details of shape to be considered for nonhuman beings. Many of the pertinent factors have been pointed out by other writers, such as L. Sprague deCamp ("Design for Life," Astounding Science Fiction, May-June, 1939). DeCamp reached the conclusion that an intelligent life form would have to wind up not grossly different in structure from a human being-carrying its sense organs high and close to the brain, having a limited number of limbs with a minimum number of these specialized for locomotion and the others for manipulation, having a rigid skeleton, and being somewhere between an Irish terrier and a grizzly bear in size. The lower size limits was set by the number of cells needed for a good brain, and the upper one by the bulk of body which could be handled by a brain without overspecialization. Sprague admitted both his estimates to be guesses, but I have seen no more convincing ones since. Whenever I have departed greatly from his strictures in my own stories, I have always felt the moral need to supply an excuse, at least to myself.
The need for an internal skeleton stems largely from the nature of muscle tissue, which can exert force only by contracting and is therefore much more effective with a good lever system to work with. I belittle neither the intelligence nor the strength of the octopus; but in spite of Victor Hugo and most other writers of undersea adventure, the creature's boneless tentacles are not all that effective as handling organs. I don't mean that the octopus and his kin are helpless hunks of meat; but if I had my choice of animals I was required to duel to the death, I would pick one of this tribe rather than one of their bonier rivals, the barracuda or the moray eel, even though neither of the latter have any prehensile organs but their jaws. (If any experienced scuba divers wish to dispute this matter of taste, go right ahead. I admit that so far, thank goodness, I am working from theory on this specific matter.)
This leads to a point which should be raised in any science fiction essay. I have made a number of quite definite statements in the preceding pages, and will make several more before finishing this chapter. Anyone with the slightest trace of intelligent critical power can find a way around most of these dicta by setting up appropriate situations. I wouldn't dream of objecting; most of my own stories have developed from attempts to work out situations in which someone who has laid down the law within my hearing would be wrong. The Hunter in Needle was a deliberate attempt to get around Sprague's minimum-size rule. Mission of Gravity complicated the size and speed issue by variable gravity.
And so on. If no one has the urge, imagination, and knowledge to kick specific holes in the things I say here, my favorite form of relaxation is in danger of going out with a whimper. If someone takes exception to the statement that muscles can only pull, by all means do something about it. We know a good deal about Earthly muscle chemistry these days; maybe a pushing cell could be worked out. I suspect it would need a very strong cell wall, but why not? Have fun with the idea. If you can make it plausible, you will have destroyed at a stroke many of the currently plausible engineering limitations to the shapes and power of animals. I could list examples for the rest of my available pages, but you should have more fun doing it yourself.
There is a natural temptation to make one's artificial organisms as weird as possible in looks and behavior. Most authors seem to have learned that it is extremely hard to invent anything stranger than some of the life forms already on our planet, and many writers as a result have taken to using either these creatures as they are, or modifying them in size and habit, or mixing them together. The last, in particular, is not a new trick; the sphinx and hippogriff have been with us for some time.
With our present knowledge, though, we have to be careful about the changes and mixtures we make. Pegasus, for example, will have to remain mythological. Even if we could persuade a horse to grow wings (feathered or not), Earthly muscle tissue simply won't fly a horse (assuming, of course, that the muscle is going along for the ride). Also, the horse would have to extract a great deal more energy than it does from its hay diet to power the flight muscles even if it could find room for them in an equine anatomy.
Actually, the realization that body engineering and life-style are closely connected is far from new. There is a story about Baron Cuvier, a naturalist of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It seems that one night his students decided to play a practical joke, and one of them dressed up in a conglomeration of animal skins, including that of a deer. The disguised youth then crept into the baron's bedroom and aroused him by growling, "Cuvier, wake up! I am going to eat you!"
The baron is supposed to have opened his eyes, looked over his visitor briefly, closed his eyes again and rolled over muttering, "Impossible! You have horns and hooves." A large body of information, it would seem, tends to produce opinions in its possessor's mind, if not always correct ones.
The trick of magnifying a normal creature to menacing size is all too common. The giant amoeba is a familiar example; monster insects (or whole populations of them) even more so. It might pay an author with this particular urge to ask himself why we don't actually have such creatures around. There is likely to be a good reason, and if he doesn't know it perhaps he should do some research.
In the case of both amoeba and insect, the so-called "square-cube" law is the trouble. Things like strength of muscle and rate of chemical and heat exchange with the environment depend on surface or cross-section area, and change with the square of linear size; Swift's Brobdingnagians would therefore have a hundred times the strength and oxygen intake rate of poor Gulliver. Unfortunately the mass of tissue to be supported and fed goes up with the cube of linear dimension, so the giants would have had a thousand times Gulliver's weight. It seems unlikely that they could have stood, much less walked (can you support ten times your present weight?). This is why a whale, though an air breather, suffocates if he runs ashore; he lacks the muscular strength to expand his chest cavity against its own weight. An ant magnified to six-foot length would be in even worse trouble, since she doesn't have a mammal's supercharger system in the first place, but mere
ly a set of air pipes running through her system. Even if the mad scientist provided his giant ants with oxygen masks, I wouldn't be afraid of them.
It is only because they are so small, and their weight has decreased even faster than their strength, that insects can perform the "miraculous" feats of carrying dozens of times their own weight or jumping hundreds of times their own length. This would have favored Swift's Lilliputians, who would have been able to make some remarkable athletic records if judged on a strictly linear scale. That is, unless they had to spend too much time in eating to offset their excessive losses of body heat.
Really small creatures, strong as they may seem, either have structures that don't seem to mind change in temperature too much (insects, small reptiles), or are extremely well insulated (small birds), or have to eat something like their own weight in food each day (shrew, hummingbird). There seems reason to believe that at least with Earthly biochemistry, the first and last of these weaknesses do not favor intelligence.
A rather similar factor operates against the idea of having a manlike creature get all his energy from sunlight, plant style. This was covered years ago by V. A. Eulach ("Those Impossible Autotrophic Men," Astounding Science Fiction, October 1956), who pointed out that a man who tries to live like a tree is going to wind up looking much like one. He will have to increase his sunlight-intercepting area without greatly increasing his mass (in other words, grow leaves), cut down his energy demands to what leaves can supply from sunlight's one-and-a-half-horse-power-per-square-yard (become sessile), and provide himself with mineral nutrients directly from the soil, since he can't catch food any more (grow roots!).
Of course, we can get around some of this by hypothesizing a hotter, closer sun, with all the attendant complications of higher planet temperature. This is fun to work out, and some of us do it, but remember that a really basic change of this sort affects everything in the ecological pyramid sitting on that particular energy base—in other words, all the life on the planet.
It may look from all this as though a really careful and conscientious science fiction writer has to be a junior edition of the Almighty. Things are not really this bad. I mentioned one way out a few pages ago in admitting there is a limit to the detail really needed. The limit is set not wholly by time, but by the fact that too much detail results in a Ph.D. thesis—perhaps a fascinating one to some people, but still a thesis rather than a story. I must admit that some of us do have this failing, which has to be sharply controlled by editors.
Perhaps the most nearly happy-medium advice that can be given is this:
Work out your world and its creatures as long as it remains fun; then write your story, making use of any of the details you have worked out which help the story. Write off the rest of the development work as something which built your own background picture—the stage setting, if you like—whose presence in your mind will tend to save you from the more jarring inconsistencies (I use this word, very carefully, rather than errors).
Remember, though, that among your readers there will be some who enjoy carrying your work farther than you did. They will find inconsistencies which you missed; depend on it. Part of human nature is the urge to let the world know how right you were, so you can expect to hear from these people either directly or through fanzine pages. Don't let it worry you.
Even if he is right and you are wrong, he has demonstrated unequivocally that you succeeded as a storyteller. You gave your audience a good time.
Hal Clement (Harry Clement Stubbs)
Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1922, Hal Clement attended public schools in Arlington and Cambridge, and received a B.S. in astronomy from Harvard in 1943. He served with 8th AAF in World War II, flying thirty-five missions over German-occupied Europe as copilot and pilot in B-24 bombers, and after the war obtained his M.Ed, at Boston University. He then taught high school science and math for four years, until recalled with his Air Force Reserve unit for two years in 1951—but he did not go overseas this time. He returned to his teaching position at Milton Academy, Massachusetts, in 1953; and is still there, but has since acquired an M.S. in chemistry. He is still in the Air Force Reserve, working in an information unit, with the rank of colonel.
Sold first story to Astounding Science Fiction magazine while a sophomore at Harvard, and has produced a small but fairly steady flow of science fiction ever since. He has also done a number of scientific articles in various publications, generally under his real name (Harry C. Stubbs).
He is a member or has been of such scientific organizations as AAAS, New England Association of Chemistry Teachers, Bond Astronomical Society, and the Meteoritical Society. He was a charter member of New England Science Fiction Association, and for two years has served on the Nebula Awards Committee of Science Fiction Writers of America.
Married since 1952 to the former Mary Myers of Atlantic City, N. J., he has one son in college, one about to go to college, and one junior-high-school-age daughter.
Iceworld, 1953 (Gnome)
Needle, 1953 (Doubleday)
Mission of Gravity, 1954 (Doubleday)
Cycle of Fire, 1957 (Ballantine)
Close to Critical, 1959 (Ballantine)
Natives of Space, 1965 (Ballantine) 3 novelettes Small Changes, 1969 (Doubleday)
First Flights to the Moon, 1970 (Doubleday)
Star Light, 1971 (Ballantine)
Anne McCaffrey
Hitch Your Dragon to a Star: Romance and Glamour in Science Fiction
Romance and glamour in science fiction? Don't be ridiculous! What's romantic about bug-eyed monsters chasing (but never catching) bosomy, terrified females around weird machines and moon rockets? (Moon rockets? How absurd! Man will never get off earth.) And what's glamorous about space suits, and Buck Rogers's gimmickry, or exploring a dust-dry planet with five other guys? Sex and emotion are nonexistent in sf! Everyone knows that![13]
If you apply the popular definitions of romance and glamour, sf does indeed lack these qualities—with good reasons.
In the beginning, and start with the classics of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, sf stories were written for a predominantly male audience; the premise being that the female mind was unequipped to cope with science or extrapolations. If the male readers wanted the stimulation of a purely "sex" story, they could find that in the erotic classics, mainstream literature, or, starting around the middle of the twentieth century, in the Playboy category.[141 The male readership wanted certain things from their science fiction stories: exercises in extrapolation, the use to which un-proven but valid scientific hypotheses could be put in the near or distant future, or plain escapist "blood-and-thunder" adventure yarns.
Science fiction, then and to a great extent now, is more cerebral than gonadal. The perspicacious sf editor gives his readers what they want to read or watches his circulation figures drop. The four top sf magazines (Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Galaxy, and Worlds of If) have survived because their editors were shrewd enough to choose the type of story their readers craved. Emotion, other than courageous fortitude in the face of alien monsters or patriotism (for the Cause, the Ship, the Society, the Planet, the Galaxy, or the Universe—depending on the theme and scope) was unwarranted. Sweating out the result of experiments is nonemotional. Romance—the starry-eyed, deep-sighing, hand-holding variety—was verboten as unnecessary. Sf had to cater to a narrow, highly specialized, fact-conscious, emotion-eschewing group. Much of the sf written in the '30s and '40s, though solidly based on sound scientific speculation, was duller than a laundry list and very often written, s'help me God, by the "practicing scientist in the laboratory who had a good idea for a story and actually wrote it." (I've forgotten John Campbell's exact alphabetization of this category of writer). Isaac Asimov is the most spectacular exception of the trained scientist turned science fiction writer. Sir Fred Hoyle is another. Then there is Hal Clement who teaches math and sciences. Alan E. Nourse, T. J. Bass, Roy Meyers and Michael Crichton, and C. Davis Belcher all rate a
n M.D. after their names. M. R. Anver and Jesse Bone are veterinary surgeons. Joe Hensley, Ted Thomas, and Walter F. Moudy are lawyers; Larry Niven and Greg (who talks to computers) Benford have advanced degrees in pure science; Burt Filer holds a dozen patents; Keith Laumer's an architect, etcetera, etcetera. The secondary point of this is that the scientist-cum-writer does not have to sound scientifically sterile and dull.
You will also quickly perceive that, with one sex-pseudonymous exception, all the above mentioned are men. Even before the equal-opportunity campaigns of the '50s and '60s, there were women writers of science fiction. Some found it wiser[151 to use ambiguous pen names so as not to prejudice the male readers against a story by a blatantly feminine author. C. L. Moore nevertheless managed to inject a good deal of the tenderer sentiments in her books; Leigh Brackett's well-rounded characterizations and plots are /were a delight, and Andre Norton remains the mistress of superb fantasy.[161 Marion (in some parts of the world that is the masculine spelling) Zimmer Bradley tends to write sf from the male viewpoint as does Lee Hoffman. Judith Merril determinedly wrote from the women's viewpoint —diaper stories they were nicknamed. But the staunchly female writers include Miriam Allen de Ford, Mildred Clingerman, Margaret St. Clair (under several pseudonyms), Katherine Maclean, and Doris Pitkin Buck. By the late fifties this chosen few was joined by Evelyn S. Smith, Kate Wilhelm, Rachel Payes, J. Hunter Holly, Jacob Transue, the late Rosel George Brown, Carol Emshwiller, Sonya Dorman, and me. There are still a few who prefer the masculine disguise: M. R. Anver, A. M. Hopf, Sydney van Scyoc and D. C. Fontana.[171 By the late '60s, and thanks to the Clarion State College Sf Workshop and the various universities and colleges now offering courses in science fiction and sf creative writing, more women are turning to this rewarding and stimulating field.
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