Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

by John C. Wright

  In this case, the short novel involved is called The Glory Game by Keith Laumer, published in 1973. The novel is well crafted, concise, without a wasted scene or word, and therefore has the clearest and most trenchant point of any tale I have ever read that is actually a tale and not a tract. The novel is so concise that the twist ending would not exist were it not for the last line, nay, the last four words.

  I regret that I must reveal those four words at the end to discuss them, so I would ask any reader to go out, buy and read the novel, and only then return here.

  The characters are rough sketches, painted in broad, energetic strokes, as befits an adventure yarn. However, this is not an adventure yarn but a morality play. The fight scenes consist of two scuffles and one shoot out. The war which serves as the backdrop to the events is never fought. The meat of the drama is in the simple but winning formula of having the hero told to violate his principles and refusing.

  The writing style is masculine, muscular, brief, and copies that same staccato brevity that Noir writers like Hammett and Chandler perfected.

  The tone is pitch-perfect Noir at its darkest. Noir stories are not nihilist stories, albeit they are cantilevered over the abyss of nihilism and dangle their toes. The point (if it can be called that) of a nihilist story is that nothing is worth doing because all ideals are foolish and dead. The point of a Noir story is that the world holds out nothing worth doing, but the tarnished knight, no longer unstained white, carries out the hard demands of his high ideals despite all this. In Noir tales, the ideals are dead but were not foolish, and a man lives up to them out of a sense of melancholy respect for their memory. It is like saluting the flag of a sunken Atlantis.

  As for the plot, all plot elements serve the point efficiently. Writers wishing to master the technique of a crisp, fast-paced, tense, curt, driving plot could do worse than studying this short novel and noting the cleanness of the story structure.

  The Glory Game is set in three acts:

  In the prologue to the action, we meet Tancredi Dalton, Space Naval Commodore on the eve of what is perhaps a military exercise and perhaps something more. We meet his girlfriend Arianne the daughter of an influential Senator Kelvin on the Armed Services committee.

  (I have no idea what prompted Laumer to select Tancredi as a name: It may refer to a leader of the First Crusade, the hero in tragic opera by Rossini, or to a main belt asteroid.)

  During his last night of shore leave, the whole theme in miniature is played out. At a nightclub, Tancredi Dalton sees some servicemen being slighted by the waiters, who renege on a promise to give the men good seats for the floorshow after taking their bribe. Dalton stops a brewing brawl and intimidates the waiter into living up to his promise. The servicemen, not mollified, harass the waiters, trip the civilians and provoke a fight with the bouncers. Dalton again interferes, this time bringing his steely-eyed intimidation skills to bear on the servicemen, whom he orders back to barracks double-time.

  Arianne is puzzled and appalled by Tan’s colorblindness to the political ramifications of his actions, since he alienated both the civilians by siding with servicemen, and then alienated the servicemen by siding with the civilians. Dalton asks why it is so difficult to understand his creed: one is supposed to do what is right without having any unrealistic ideas about the cost.

  Then comes the setup: An alien race called the Hukk have been prying into Terran space, attacking colonies and committing raids; these fierce warriors are weaker militarily than the Terrans, but more aggressive. The fleet has been called upon to perform exercises near Hukk space, as a show of force, in a place dubious electronic intel says the Hukk Armada is gathered. Dalton is approached by the Softliners, who want to answer Hukk aggression by supine concessions, waving the olive branch; and then Dalton is approached by the Hardliners, who want a preemptive military strike without a declaration of war, followed by general massacre of the Hukk worlds.

  In Act One, Senator Kelvin the Hardliner reveals to Dalton that Admiral Starbird has secret, sealed orders not to engage the Hukk even if fired upon, which means the destruction of the Terran fleet, which must be halted at all cost; Undersecretary Treech the Softliner reveals that another Commodore named Borgman has secret, sealed orders to relieve Admiral Starbird of his command before he opens his secret, sealed orders, and then Borgman will carry out the general massacre, which means a genocide of the Hukk civilians, which must be halted at all costs. Dalton is given a third set of secret, sealed orders allowing him to relieve Admiral Starbird of command before Commodore Borgman relieves Starbird of command, so that Dalton can prevent the massacre.

  The Hardliners demand Dalton work for them, because he is the man who will be in the crucial position when the fleet sails. He says only, “I’ll think about it.” The Softliners, after trying to abduct him, likewise make that demand for the same reason. He gives them the same answer. “I’ll think about it.”

  Hence, both sides demand his loyalty, albeit he has agreed to nothing. He tells them both he is working for no one but the Constitution, to whom he gave his oath. Neither side understands him.

  Dalton, figuring the situation from the Hukk point of view, realizes that they, like their human counterparts, are playing the Glory Game. That is, they want the maximum advantage military force can bring with minimal losses on their side. The Glory Game is a practical and non-idealistic approach to military policy, an attempt to maximize gain (including terrain, but also face, reputation, honor) while minimizing loss (shame and life and treasure). It is Realpolitik.

  He realizes from several clues that the logical option for the Hukk is to send their Grand Armada to Luna while the Earth fleet is out of position performing their meaningless exercises, because the Earth intelligence has been deceived as to the Hukk fleet location. Defying, (without technically disobeying), his orders, Dalton pulls his tiny contingent of the fleet back toward Earth at full flank speed, and convinces the Hukk Grand Admiral, by sheer poker bluff and hardcore stare, that the Hukk fleet is outgunned and outflanked and outnumbered. The Hukk Grand Admiral, impressed, believes the bluff and surrenders. The alien warships strike their colors and dump their guns.

  The Hardliner Commodore Borgman radios ahead and orders Dalton to open fire on the helpless Hukk ships, and proceed with the massacre. Dalton, who gave his word of honor to the Hukk Grand Admiral, refuses. Dalton shows Borgman his secret sealed orders overriding the second set of secret sealed orders overriding the first set of secret sealed orders, so he is technically not disobeying a lawful command. So he alienates the Hardliners.

  In Act Two, Dalton is showered with rewards by Treech and his powerfully-placed Softliner party, and given a promotion to Admiral, because he saved the Hukk from genocide. Dalton is asked to help promote a controversial treaty which will give the Hukk aid and weapons and a lollypop and a pat on the head and dismantle the Terran Fleet, in an act of suicidal mass stupidity that seemed utterly unrealistic when I read it as a child but which, rereading it as an adult, seemed if anything a trifle mild and understated. (Real politicians bent on preemptive surrender would do much, much worse.)

  As before, his girlfriend Arianne urges him to play along with the powers that be, to pick a side and stick with it. However, when called upon to testify before Congress, Dalton cannot bring himself to speak out-and-out lies, nor will he sign on to the falsified after-action report, nor go along with the huge deception the Softliners are attempting to pull on the people.

  In one glaringly anachronistic scene, a newsman actually asks him for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and reports it. That scene would be laugh out loud funny if someone tried to write it about newsmen of this day and age. Can you imagine a newsman actually being interested in the truth? It is like a whore being interested in chaste romance.

  The Softliners are now alienated; everyone hates Dalton; he is cashiered and sent off to oversee a junkyard of old Naval hulks on the dusty dry and dismal frontier planet of Grassroots.
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br />   Act Three is a reprise, the same theme in a minor key. The scene opens but three months later. Dalton quite by accident discovers strange signals from space, investigates, and gives chase to a one-man Hukk scoutship, which pancakes into the ground while attempting to evade him. Aboard is a dead spy and Hukk plans for invasion. (The Hukk, as Dalton predicted, interpreted the peace treaty rewarding their aggressive behavior as an invitation for further aggression.)

  Dalton attempts to tell the local mayor of Grassport, but when His Honor discovers him to be none other than the disgraced Admiral Dalton, the Mayor dismisses Dalton as a lunatic, and recommends sitting tight, doing nothing, and letting the all-wise Terran bureaucracy handle everything.

  With no further ado, Dalton breaks into the arsenal, abducts the local recruitment officer, Sgt. Brunt, and heads out to the location where the Hukk are landing their assault boat. With the aid of some rifles set on autopilot, and some sniper skills, Dalton damages the boat, and kills half a dozen Hukk officers and crewmen before Brunt, betraying Dalton, wanders into the kill zone waving the white flag.

  Dalton pretends to surrender, and then draws his holdout pistol, threatening to shoot through Brunt to kill the Hukk Captain cowering behind him. This Captain had been part of the Grand Fleet which surrendered to Dalton previously off Luna, and remembers him, therefore both fears him and trusts him, and agrees to terms.

  The Hukk agree to withdraw if and only if they can save face: that is, Dalton must agree never to reveal that they actually set foot (in their case, set claw) on the frontier planet. Dalton agrees, even though that means he faces scorn from the mayor for ringing a false alarm, and possible criminal prosecution from the militia for breaking and entering and stealing their rifles.

  At this point arrives the expected reward for virtue: Brunt turns out to be a Major in Naval Intelligence, specifically sent to the planet to keep an eye on Dalton. Now that it has been proved that Dalton was right about everything all along, was honest and being slandered all along, the Navy Intelligence Corps is willing to embrace him with open arms, let bygones be bygones, and give him his old career back.

  Dalton says, “I’ll think about it.”

  The four-word ending impressed me as a child and impresses me more as an adult, albeit now I see the melancholy, the painful sorrow, beneath that brief and stoic sentence. It means that the Naval Intelligence Corps is no more to be trusted to protect a man’s conscience than is the Senatorial staff, the bureaucrats, the State Department, or the Joint Chiefs who form the backdrop of corruption and compromise against which Dalton shines so brightly, and so alone.

  It means there is no reward for virtue. None.

  It means virtue is not its own reward, virtue means merely getting a boot in the teeth when a man is already beaten into the ground.

  As a youth, I was too sunny and filled with the milk of human kindness to be able to comprehend such a bitter moral to the story. I just thought it meant Dalton did not need the approval of his peers, that he was a nonconformist (as was I, and all of my generation. We were nonconformists together, in perfect lockstep, each careful to be a nonconformist exactly like all the others). Like I said, I did not get it.

  Dalton is a martyr. He is a witness to a higher moral code than any code found in this life. But, since this is a science fiction story, and since it was written in the seventies, no introduction of any religious theme would have been welcomed here. It would have been against the mood, which, as I said, is Noir in its purest and darkest form.

  It is Noir, but is it science fiction?

  The story of The Glory Game contained no science fictional speculations at all. It was in that sense a very conservative book, dwelling on what was the same in human nature in all ages past and present. It could have been set in any setting with the same impact.

  But if we define science fiction to include only those tales that have scientific speculation as the center of their plot, we are defining science fiction to exclude my genre, Space Opera, which is defined as an adventure story in a vaguely Science Fiction-flavored setting.

  The rule of thumb is a thought experiment: imagine the same story set in the present, on Earth, or in the historical past. Eliminate the scientific speculation present. If the story can still be told, it is not SF. In SF the speculation is the heart of the story. If you can tell the same tale on the sailing ship Enterprise or from the viewpoint of plucky rebels fighting the Roman Empire or the Spanish Empire rather than the Galactic Empire, then the tale is not SF properly so called.

  On the other hand, this is a crisp and clear definition, very serviceable to fans of Analog, and other ‘Nuts and Bolts’ types, so I dare utter no protest against it.

  The definition clearly works for Hard SF. Let us take three examples from Heinlein, Asimov, and Clark, by common consensus, the hardest of Hard SF writers, or at least the most famous.

  There is no story in Stranger In A Strange Land if Mike the Martian is not from Mars, does not have psychic powers, and was not raised by a more advanced species than man. The science fictional speculation about what a higher civilization would be like which stands to industrial, monogamous and monotheistic civilization as the civilization stands to primitive polytheist and polygamous savages is the core of the book.

  The same story being told about, let us say, a castaway infant raised in the jungle wilderness returning to his family in London could not contrast the shortcomings of civilization with future splendors of the orgy-ridden nudist communism which Heinlein, (and apparently every heresy since the dawn of time), has seen as the futuristic or utopian superior of civilized virtue. Such a story can, however, contrast the shortcomings of civilization with the noble savagery of more primitive times — such is the point of Tarzan and A Princess Of Mars and Conan stories and countless others.

  The story is innately progressive, showing how the next step in evolution, the superman, can throw aside his clothing and his marriage vows as easily as he throws aside the curse of Adam saying he must toil for his bread. The superman lives without sin and without law. And without clothing.

  By contrast, Starship Troopers, (a book I myself far prefer), could have taken place anywhere, anytime, since it is only a story of boot camp and a series of lectures on civic responsibility. Nothing would have been lost by making Mr. Rico into a grunt storming Normandy Beach, or a footslogger in Caesar’s Gallic campaign, or an Apache brave learning the rough and manly discipline of the warband. Only the props and backdrops would change, not the plot and theme.

  Here we find an inherently conservative message in an inherently conservative story, that is, the tools of war change, but men don’t.

  Likewise, there is no story in Foundation without the Seldon Plan, (and, to be blunt, precious little with it), that is, without the science fictional speculation that human history is subject to predictable laws just like the gas laws.

  The story is a story about social engineering. A mathematician and a group of academic intellectuals decide to save civilization by manipulating history, and their plan leads to a Second Empire. The idea of giving votes to plebeians simply never comes up.

  By contrast, The Stars Like Dust could have been written as a historical novel concerning the declining Roman Empire facing the Golden Horde.

  Likewise again, Childhood’s End is a book I take to be the quintessential science fiction book. It is almost a myth, not a novel, since the main characters are all utterly forgettable. There is no story aside from the central conceit of a more advanced species aiding, (or forcing), mankind up the next step of the ladder of evolution to the realm of the superhuman. The concept of the ladder of evolution where supermen stand to men as men stand to apes is pure Science Fiction, indeed, is almost the definition of Science Fiction.

  The Overlords fulfill all the Progressive dreams in one fell swoop. As the gigantic saucers hover over the cities of man, there is suddenly one world government, an end to war, and (oddly, considering the world is about to be destroyed) no more bul
lfighting nor cruelty to animals. And that silly mental disease called religion is brushed airily aside in a paragraph: man is too grown up for gods. Then in the climax of the book, the children of men become gods, man goes extinct, the world is obliterated, and the children of men fly off as pure spirits to merge with the Galactic Overmind also known as the Pleroma, the disembodied paradise of the Gnostics. The destruction of the material world and a life of pure and disembodied intellect was the central concept of Neoplatonism and every other heresy since the dawn of time. Think of it as taking nudism to the ultimate extreme.

  By contrast, uh… I cannot think of a single novel or short story by Arthur Clarke which was not science fiction, that is, a story that could have been told in some other milieu without losing its point.

  I warned the reader that this would not be a book review but an exploration of another chain of thought to which rereading this book led me. Here below is that chain of thought. And, for better or worse, it is a long one.

  The theme of the book, as I said above, is abnormally clear, because Laumer skillfully has left out anything which might detract or delay from emphasizing that theme. This story is as sharply pointed as a fable by Aesop. The point is the answer to the question famously asked by Socrates, but surely asked by all men in all ages when they reach a certain age, whether it is better to be seen as evil while truly being good, or to be seen as good while truly being evil?

  The question divorces the reward of virtue from the reality of virtue, at least, in the view of the world where the only reward is the esteem and applause of men. Tan Dalton does what is right, come hellfire or floodwater, and does not flinch at paying the price in terms of esteem lost, prestige ruined, career savaged, character slandered—and he does not get the girl in the end.