by Ben Bova
They’re coming; I know they’re coming. The whole bloomin’ regiment! Climb the golden dome and warn them. Warn them. Warn them!
The System
“Not just research,” Gorman said, rocking smugly in his swivel chair, “Organized research.”
Hopler, the cost-time analyst, nodded agreement. “Organized,” Gorman continued, “and carefully controlled—from above. The System—that’s what gets results. Give the scientists their way and they’ll spend you deaf, dumb, and blind on butterfly sex-ways or sub-subatomic particles. Damned nonsense.”
Sitting on the front inch of the visitor’s chair, Hopler asked meekly, “I’m afraid I don’t see what this has to do...”
“With the analysis you turned in?” Gorman glanced at the ponderous file that was resting on a corner of his desk. “No, I suppose you don’t know. You just chew through the numbers, don’t you? Names, people, ideas... they don’t enter into your work.”
With an uncomfortable shrug, Hopler replied, “My job is economic analysis. The System shouldn’t be biased by personalities...”
“Of course not.”
“But now that it’s over, I would like to know... I mean, there’ve been rumors going through the Bureau.”
“About the cure? They’re true. The cure works. I don’t know the details of it,” Gorman said, waving a chubby hand. “Something to do with repressor molecules. Cancerous cells lack ‘em. So the biochemists we’ve been supporting have found out how to attach repressors to the cancer cells. Stops ‘em from growing. Controls the cancer. Cures the patient. Simple... now that we can do it.”
“It... it’s almost miraculous.”
Gorman frowned. “What’s miraculous about it? Why do people always connect good things with miracles? Why don’t you think of cancer as a miracle, a black miracle?”
Hopler fluttered his hands as he fumbled for a reply. “Never mind,” Gorman snapped. “This analysis of yours. Shows the cure can be implemented on a nationwide basis. Not too expensive. Not too demanding of trained personnel that we don’t have.”
“I believe the cure could even be put into worldwide effect,” Hopler said.
“The hell it can be!”
“What? I don’t understand. My analysis...”
“Your analysis was one of many. The System has to look at all sides of the picture. That’s how we beat heart disease, and stroke, and even highway deaths.”
“And now cancer.”
“No. Not cancer. Cancer stays. Demographic analysis knocked out all thoughts of using the cure. There aren’t any other major killers around anymore. Stop cancer and we swamp ourselves with people. So the cure gets shelved.”
For a stunned instant, Hopler was silent. Then, “But... I need the cure!”
Gorman nodded grimly. “So will I. The System predicts it.”
Cement
Professor Uriah K. Pencilbeam, an obscure anthropologist from a virtually unknown small college in (where else?) southern California, has announced a theory that has sent shock waves throughout the myriad worlds of science, government, and industry.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” says Tony (“Slug”) Solazzo, one of Los Angeles’ leading building contractors. “This professor don’t know what he’s talking about.”
But the head of the anthropology department of a prestigious Ivy League university has said of Pencilbeam’s theory, “He’s explained it all. There’s nothing left for the rest of us to do except fill in a few of the details.” The Ivy League anthropologist refused to allow his name to be used.
Briefly stated, Pencilbeam’s theory is this: Governments exist for the benefit of building contractors. Indeed, Pencilbeam insists that governments were originally created, back in the Old Stone Age, so that building contractors could flourish.
As the professor himself puts it, “If it means pouring cement, a government will do it. If it doesn’t mean pouring cement, a government might do it, but the chances are much slimmer.”
In his startling research paper, which is already rumored to be in line for a Pulitzer Prize, Pencilbeam gives a long list of examples to bolster his thesis.
Ancient Egypt, he claims, was little more than a few scattered towns strung out along the Nile until the first Pharaoh united the Upper and Lower Kingdoms into a single political entity. Historians and paleontologists have always been puzzled as to the reasons for this sudden unification. Pencilbeam has the answer: the building contractors lobbied for unification so that they could get to build the colossal monuments that we still revere today: the pyramids, the sphinx, Cleopatra’s Needle, etc.
Pencilbeam points out that the ancient civilization of Sumer, on the plain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now Iraq, was just as old and perhaps even older than Egypt. But they built their cities out of bricks made from dried mud. “No cement, no endurance,” Pencilbeam says. The Sumerian civilization decayed while Egypt flourished for thousands of years.
Every conqueror and emperor, from Caesar through Napoleon, was secretly a front man for the construction contractors. Look at the money and effort they lavished on building their capital cities. Caesar was assassinated when he threatened to stop construction of the Circus Maximus, which was suffering from serious cost overruns and labor disputes. Napoleon practically rebuilt all of Paris, except for Montmartre, where the nightclub interests were already firmly entrenched. While his Grand Armee was freezing its collective butt in Russia, Napoleon’s building contractors were amassing huge fortunes back home.
It is interesting to note that barbarian conquerors such as Attilla, Genghis Khan, and Tambarlane had no lasting impact on history despite their extensive conquests. This is true precisely because they poured no cement, according to Pencilbeam’s theory. They came, they saw, they conquered, but they did not build any public monuments, bridges, highways or condominium complexes. In Pencilbeam’s view, one way to delineate a barbarian from a true empire-builder is to look at the state of the construction industry during a man’s reign. Contrast Genghis Khan, who conquered everything from the coast of China to the Danube River, with Cecil Rhodes, the Victorian Englishman who dreamed of a railroad from Cape Town to Cairo. How many Khan Scholarships are there in the world today?
Pencilbeam’s theory even explains much of recent and current history. Adolph Hitler would have been the greatest ruler of all time, considering the amount of cement he expended on bunkers, pillboxes, tank traps, bomb shelters, etc. Fortunately for the Allies, brilliant military thinkers hit upon the idea of demolishing those constructions by aerial bombardment and, also by bombing night and day, preventing the Nazis from erecting new constructions. Unable to pour cement effectively, Nazi Germany eventually collapsed.
In the United States it has long been known that if a state or local government can start a construction project, it will. Traditionally, the federal government’s role has been limited to constructing Post Offices and interstate highways, except for Washington, D.C., where the amount of cement used is obvious even to the most casual visitor. (Vide the Washington Monument, the new Metro, et al.)
Even the US space program is no exception to Pencilbeam’s penetrating theory. NASA was at its prime, with virtually unlimited funding, in the 1960s when the space agency was pouring megatonnages of cement for its facilities at Cape Canaveral, Houston, and elsewhere. Once those facilities were built, once the cement hardened, NASA’s funding woes began. Not even the Space Shuttle (which uses practically no cement at all) has significantly brightened NASA’s funding picture.
Every valid scientific theory must be able to predict new phenomena, as well as explaining old ones. Pencilbeam points out that the MX missile program, which will require the expenditure of huge amounts of cement wherever and however the missiles are ultimately based, will certainly pass Congressional muster and go on to full-scale construction. Of course, the Russians—who are probably slightly ahead of the US in the cement race—might revert to the World War II tactic of demolishing the
cement sites and establishing their own construction industry as supreme in the world.
If they do, Pencilbeam insists, the survivors of the nuclear exchange will undoubtedly start right in where civilization began: pouring cement and pressuring the government for bigger construction contracts.
Building a Real World
In addition to being a writer, lecturer, and retired editor, I am also a space activist. I believe firmly that humankind’s expansion into space is not only exciting and beneficial, it is necessary for the survival of the species. I wrote a book on the subject, called The High Road. I have also joined several space-activism organizations, and in 1983 was elected the president of the oldest of them, the National Space Institute. Back in 1980, when I was asked to be Guest of Honor at the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society’s annual conference, Philcon 80, it occurred to me that although science fiction fans love to read about space travel, relatively few of them were actively working in the real world to strengthen the space program. I wrote this speech, which was later adapted into magazine form and published in Analog.
Frankly, I’m afraid that there are still too many science fiction fans sitting on their duffs reading about the future instead of working to help make it come true.
My text today is from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Chapter 5, Verse 13: “Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?”
We all love this thing we call science fiction. No two of us agree as to just what, exactly, science fiction is—but whatever it is, we agree that we love it.
Perhaps too much. After all, there is a big, brawling world out there that desperately needs men and women of vision, and vigor, and courage. Yet it is awfully tempting to remain here in our snug little world of science fiction and hope that the outside world leaves us alone.
When I first came into science fiction, writers and fans alike bemoaned the fact that we were in a literary ghetto. Science fiction was ignored by the general reading public, despised by the critics, and treated by the publishers as something between a narcotics addiction and a social disease.
Through the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, many writers struggled to break down the old ghetto walls. So did a few fans. Gradually, brick by stubborn brick, the walls did come down.
An enormous part of that success was due to two men whom we seldom think of as science fiction writers: Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas. Star Trek created a huge audience for science fiction among people who had never read a science fiction story in their lives. Star Wars cashed in on that audience—and made it even bigger.
Shallow as Star Wars was, as science fiction, it was a profound message to the men who make the money decisions in New York and Hollywood. The old ghetto walls were finally leveled by outsiders who came to us searching for gold.
Much of what those outsiders have created is unpalatable to the majority of us who have spent our lives in science fiction.
Frankly, I am appalled to see motion picture producers sinking twenty, thirty, forty million dollars into tripe such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, or Alien. The motion picture version of Star Trek was not as good as the average segment of the TV series, despite the money and talent that was lavished on it. And Disney’s Black Hole was an exercise in frustration for all concerned, especially the audience.
In the world of the printed word, we have seen the mainstream picking up a number of science fiction ideas and themes, and using them in mainstream novels that have little to do with science fiction.
Try reading a Robert Ludlum novel, or any of a dozen books that have been on the best seller lists this year, such as The Third World War. The scenarios, the plot techniques, the trick of presenting future events as past history, all these have been lifted bodily from science fiction.
Most of these books would not have been published at all five or ten years ago, because the publishers would have considered them too “far out.” Or, if they were published, they would have been labeled Science Fiction and sold to us in the ghetto, while the multi-million-dollar mainstream market totally ignored them.
The only thing that the mainstream has not lifted from science fiction has been the science fiction writers. With the exception of Frank Herbert’s Dune novels and Robert Heinlein’s newest work, no science fiction writer has ever received the backing from a publisher that is necessary to reach the exalted level of Best Sellerdom.2
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2Happily, this situation has improved greatly since 1980.
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Of course, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land has sold millions of copies. So have several other science fiction novels. But only over a period of many years. Movie tie-ins sell fast and furiously, but it is difficult to rank them as science fiction novels.
On the magazine front, there is good news and bad news.
The good news, I say unabashedly, is Omni. For some strange reason, I’m rather partial to that magazine.
Omni is selling close to one million copies per month. It has nearly 200,000 paid subscriptions. Readership surveys by independent organizations such as Yankelovich, Skelley, and White report that Omni has at least four million readers each month.
In short, Omni is doing quite well, despite the persistent rumors of catastrophe that I hear at science fiction conventions. Two months after the magazine started, some fans were claiming that it was going to fold up. Two weeks after I became the Executive Editor, I heard a rumor that I had walked off the job. It’s as if some fans want Omni to fail, because they cannot stand the idea of a magazine that contains science fiction making a major success out there in the real world.
Less good is the situation with the other science fiction magazines.
Analog has been sold to Davis Publications. While this is probably a good thing for Analog in the long run, because Davis is much more interested in the magazine than Conde Nast ever was, it is a disappointment because it means that one of the most powerful magazine publishers in the nation still cannot see the value of science fiction.
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine is doing very well, and George Scithers picked up his second well-earned Hugo in three years at Noreascon II. But frankly, the magazine is aimed at such a juvenile audience that an old-timer like me finds it rather uninteresting most of the time.
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction seems to be going along its literate way, still the darling of Charlie Brown’s readers, but virtually unchanging, year by year. Galaxy and Amazing have been in deep trouble for years, and Galileo—the most interesting of the newcomers—has also run into serious financial problems.
If history has taught us anything, it is that magazines must grow or die. Inflation is constantly driving costs upward. If a magazine that depends almost entirely on its cover price is to stay in business, it must either bring in more customers or raise its cover price. No magazine can continue escalating its price indefinitely, so the long-range goal must be to increase circulation.
Yet the science fiction magazines have been singularly unable to accomplish that task.
I must point out that Omni—because it is sold to a much larger readership than the science fiction audience, and because it is heavy with advertising—does not fall into the same category as the “hard-core” science fiction magazines.
Grow or die. The hard-core science fiction magazines are not growing.
Is science fiction itself growing or dying? Most outward signs point toward growth. There are more people attending science fiction conventions than ever before, and more conventions being held. Noreascon II was a well-managed mob scene, with nearly six thousand people in attendance. In fact, the WorldCon now ranks among the top annual conventions held within the United States, which explains why the hotel chains treat fandom with some respect.
Most colleges and universities regularly schedule classes in science fiction. And (God help us all) there are now professorships
in science fiction. No one has been able to count the thousands of high schools and junior highs that hold science fiction classes.
Yet, how many of these convention attendees and students and—yes, even Omni readers—are truly science fiction fans? Only a small percentage, apparently. The true test of fandom’s strength lies in the circulation of the hard-core science fiction magazines and in the sales of science fiction paperbacks. Magazine circulation has grown very little, if any, over the past decade. And paperback book sales have dropped so steeply that heads are rolling all through the book publishing industry.3
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3This too has changed for the better.
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More alarming—to me, at least—is that the mental attitude of fandom has not seemed to grow much over the past ten years. Or twenty, for that matter.
I attend conventions year after year and see the same people saying the same things to each other. Some of the faces change, from time to time, but the ideas, the mindset, remains the same.
You don’t think so? Take a look at the most popular science fiction books of 1980 and compare that list with the best-read books of 1970, or 1960, or even earlier. The same themes, the same characters, with only minor variations.
