The World Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence

by Alexei Panshin

  Except for one, that is. Shea has a firm grip on the principle of universal operating principles. He thinks:

  This world he was in—perhaps permanently—was governed by laws of its own. What were those laws? There was only one piece of equipment of which the transference had not robbed him; his modern mind, habituated to studying and analyzing the general rules guiding individual events. He ought to be able to reason out the rules governing this existence and to use them—something which the rustic Thjalfl would never think of doing. So far the only rules he had noticed were that the gods had unusual powers. But there must be general laws underlying even these—444

  In short, though magic may work in this realm and our familiar physics may not, at a stroke magic has been redefined and turned into something that looks very much like an alternate form of physics. Armed with this attitude, it isn’t long at all before Shea himself is successfully constructing spells.

  On the eve of Ragnarök—the ultimate confrontation between the gods of Asgard and their enemies whose outcome no one can foretell—Shea and the god Heimdall find themselves prisoners of the fire giants of Muspellheim. But Shea proves able to perform a successful job of magical plastic surgery on a troll guard who is sensitive about the size of his nose, and thereby to win his cooperation in contriving their escape.

  Shea reflects:

  He couldn’t get used to the idea that he, of all people, could work magic. It was contrary to the laws of physics, chemistry and biology. But then, where he was the laws of physics, chemistry and biology had been repealed. He was under the laws of magic. His spell had conformed exactly to those laws, as explained by Dr. Chalmers. This was a world in which those laws were basic. The trick was that he happened to know one of those laws, while the general run of mortals—and trolls and gods, too—didn’t know them. . . . If he had only provided himself with a more elaborate knowledge of those laws instead of the useless flashlights, matches and guns—445

  What a complete reordering this is of everything we ever thought we knew! And what marvelous promises of new possibility are made here!

  The most notable previous stories of cross-dimensional travel in Unknown had been several 1939 short novels by L. Ron Hubbard in which contemporary guys found themselves transferred into otherworlds out of the pages of The Arabian Nights. In the first of these, “The Ultimate Adventure” (Apr. 1939), the hero manages to prevail in a strange magical country on the strength of a revolver and a box of matches. In the second, “Slaves of Sleep” (July 1939), the edge the hero enjoys is his cunning and his ability to take advantage of opportunity.

  But “The Roaring Trumpet” went far beyond anything in Hubbard’s stories in its explicit imposition of contemporary authority over the worlds of the imagination. In the first place, Pratt and de Camp did not just invoke one specific otherworld or another. Rather, they suggested the existence of an infinity of different worlds, and then created paraphysics, a whole new branch of science, just to deal with them.

  Moreover, in this story transference between dimensions was not just some half-accidental reseat of running afoul of an ancient talisman or a whacked-out scientist with a potent drug, as in Hubbard’s stories. Instead Pratt and de Camp offered us the syllogismobile, a deliberate scientific means of travel that, rightly operated, could rotate us out of the limits ordinarily set for us and thrust us into a thousand different universes.

  Most important of all, however, was the fundamental assertion in “The Roaring Trumpet” that there must be one set of operating principles or another at work in every last nook and cranny of the multiverse, with ultimate operating principles to regulate the interactions of the whole. It was this new ordering of existence that permitted conceptions like paraphysics and the syllogismobile to be thought of at all—in much the same way that H.G. Wells’s vision of vast sweeps of post-utopian future time necessarily preceded and made possible his conception of a time machine to explore them.

  Just like an L. Ron Hubbard hero abroad in another dimension, Harold Shea has the advantage of a flexible, questioning modern mind. But the real edge he enjoys is his confident certainty that even though he may happen to find himself in some place where he doesn’t know the local rules, nonetheless rules will exist and he will be able to work them out for himself.

  His success in casting simple spells is a heady indication of potential success for the Western scientific mode of approach—but it is all the farther that Shea is able to go in this initial story. When he and Heimdall join Odinn before the gates of Hell to warn him that Ragnarök has arrived, the demonic old hag Odinn has come to consult hurls a clot of snow at Shea and bids him begone to the misbegotten place from which he came. And, forthwith, back to Ohio he travels, startling Dr. Chalmers and his colleagues with the suddenness of his arrival, the wildness of his appearance, and the size of his appetite.

  It might be fair to say that unlike Martin Padway in Sixth Century Rome, Harold Shea is not yet sufficiently knowledgeable or powerful to tip the balance of the situation he has been faced with. With him departed, Ragnarök will still go on to its uncertain conclusion.

  But then it is only appropriate that Shea should not be there, since he never wanted to have anything to do with Ragnarök in the first place. At the outset of his adventure, when he first learns from Heimdall that the final battle is near, his immediate impulse is to ask, “ ‘What can I do to keep from getting caught in the gears? . . . I mean, if the world’s going to bust up, how can I keep out of the smash?’ ”446

  That is what Shea asks for, and that, ultimately, is what he gets.

  However, in the second Harold Shea comic adventure, the significantly titled “The Mathematics of Magic,” matters are carried a vital step or two further.

  This story followed almost immediately on the heels of “The Roaring Trumpet”: For the readers of Unknown in 1940, the second Shea short novel saw publication in August, just three months after the first. For Harold Shea himself, his new story begins even before he has put a period to the previous adventure with three steaks and a whole apple pie.

  The check hasn’t been paid before he and Dr. Chalmers are laying plans for a second trip into another world—this time with Chalmers as a participant. Shea once again proposes Cuchulinn’s Ireland as their destination, but Chalmers quickly turns this down as too rough and barbaric. Then Shea suggests the world of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene—a chivalric epic telling of struggle between the knights of Queen Gloriana and various enchanters that was left half-finished at the poet’s death in 1599.

  Chalmers says:

  “Certainly a brilliant and interesting world, and one in which I personally might have some place. But I am afraid we should find it uncomfortable if we landed in the latter half of the story, where Queen Gloriana’s knights are having a harder and harder time, as though Spenser were growing discouraged, or the narrative for some reason were escaping his hands, taking on a life of its own. I’m not sure we could exercise the degree of selectivity needed to get into the story at the right point.”447

  Chalmers’ objection is that this is another deteriorating situation with an uncertain outcome, not unlike the Ragnarök of Shea’s first adventure. And therefore they would be well-advised to give it the go-by.

  But so great has Shea’s confidence become as a result of his first foray into the unknown that he now perceives danger and impending disaster not as threats but rather as a challenge. This time he doesn’t desire to avoid an hour of overwhelming crisis.

  Instead, he says eagerly, “ ‘Listen: why shouldn’t we jump right into that last part of the Faerie Queene and help Gloriana’s knights straighten things out? You said you had worked out some new angles. We ought to be better than anyone else in the place.’ ”448

  By this, of course, he doesn’t mean better men. He means more adept operators of magic.

  Shea’s proposal is that they should take themselves and their modern magic to this world, oppose its antagonists, and alter its fate. Like M
artin Padway in Rome, it is his hope to avert a fall of darkness. And Chalmers—seeing this as the chance to make a mark that has been denied him in this world—agrees.

  What incredible confidence is displayed here! To imagine that one could transfer into another world entirely and immediately have a better grasp of its inner workings than its most accomplished natives! But that is the modern science fiction attitude.

  And this time, as token of their increased power of command, their syllogismobile takes them just where they want to go, to exactly the right point in Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Here is real confirmation both of their theory of multiple worlds and of the syllogismobile as a precise and reliable means of travel.

  Very shortly, Dr. Chalmers is successfully attempting spells. Too successfully, in fact. When he attempts to change water into wine, instead he gets Scotch whiskey. And when he attempts to conjure up a dragon, he gets a hundred, fortunately all harmless vegetarians.

  Shea asks about the problems Chalmers is having, and Chalmers answers:

  “A property of the mathematics of magic. Since it’s based on the calculus of classes, it is primarily qualitative, not quantitative. Hence the quantitative effects are indeterminate. You can’t—at least, with my present skill I can’t—locate the decimal point. Here the decimal point was too far rightward, and I got a hundred dragons instead of one. It might have been a thousand. . . . Apparently the professionals learn by experience just how much force to put into their incantations. It’s an art rather than a science. If I could solve the quantitative problem, I could put magic on a scientific basis.”449

  For a time it appears that Chalmers may be allowing his new love for the study of magic to get the better of him to the point of forgetting the purpose for which they came. When speaking to the bow-and-arrow-toting woods girl, Belphebe, he can assert that magic is neither black nor white in itself, but merely another morally neutral branch of knowledge that then may be applied to ends that current governing authority happens to approve or happens to disapprove.

  And indeed, when the opportunity presents itself, Chalmers seems only too happy to be elected as a qualified member by the local Enchanters’ Chapter—the bad guys—and to learn whatever he can from them. When he emerges from a series of lectures on magic, including one entitled “A neue use for ye Bloud of unbaptized infants,”450 he is even capable of looking pleased with himself and remarking, “ ‘A trifle harrowing that session, but gratifyingly informative.’ ”451

  Shea, who has fallen in love with Belphebe, is horrified that the enchanters plan to capture her and rip her toenails out. But Chalmers is ready to wave aside these impulses to excess as nothing to get upset about, and to say, “ ‘In a few months I shall be in a position to effect an industrial revolution in magic—’ ”452

  In this leaning toward amoral, fact-minded pragmatics, Chalmers is a true representative of modern science fiction. At his best, the new Atomic Age man would be a confident, competent manipulator of the inner workings of the universe, but at his worst he would merely be a scientific operator looking for the next button to push.

  It’s somewhere along this axis that Reed Chalmers’ character could be said to fall. For better or for worse, he’s an example of the mid-century scientific barbarian, his attention so tightly fixed on what works that he is all but completely oblivious to other values.

  For that matter, despite his leftover impulses toward the romantic, Harold Shea is basically this type of man, too—as we can tell from his concern with “tricks” and “angles.” It is precisely their narrowly focused, result-oriented cast of mind that permits Shea and Chalmers to seek out other worlds with the intention of tinkering with them and making adjustments in the first place.

  Fortunately, however, at the climactic moment of “The Mathematics of Magic,” when Harold Shea leads a party into the enchanters’ castle to rescue Belphebe, Chalmers is able to rouse himself from his single-minded program of scientific investigation long enough to recall which side he is really on. He casts a crucial spell, sending pairs of hands swooping through the air to strangle nearly half of the enchanters. And when the battle is finally won, he can announce cheerfully, “ ‘The really important fact about this evening’s work is that I’ve discovered the secret of quantitative control.’ ”453

  Shea succeeds in saving Belphebe from the clutches of the last of the enchanters by using a spell that Chalmers has had the foresight to prep him with—a highly significant “spell against magicians.”454 But the result of the use of this spell—precisely as Chalmers has warned him—is a magicostatic discharge that sends Shea zipping back to Ohio.

  However, Shea doesn’t really mind this second abrupt return from an otherworld adventure. His decision to use this spell was, in fact, his decision to go home. The enchanters have now been whipped—and with him he has the true ultimate object of his venturings, Belphebe, his dream-girl. That is quite enough to satisfy him.

  Chalmers, however, remains behind. He has found a girlfriend of his own, he has his decimal point rightly located at last, and his eyes are all agleam with dreams of the science of magic. What at the outset of “The Roaring Trumpet” had seemed a completely unacceptable risk to him—the possibility of never being able to return to our world—by the end of “The Mathematics of Magic” has become his own deliberate choice.

  Chalmers never will go back to Ohio. He prefers to remain permanently abroad in the meta-universe as an itinerant master of paraphysics.

  It was no accident that these two pivotal fantasy stories by de Camp and Pratt should have been broadly humorous. There was a very real sense in which they were nothing more than affectionate travesties, games of “let’s pretend” played to comic effect with favorite works of old high literature. They weren’t really meant to be taken seriously—and said so by being funny.

  At the same time, of course, there was also a sense in which de Camp and Pratt were undeniably serious. The Harold Shea stories said very plainly: Such is the ubiquity and centrality of universal operating principles that if the realms described in the high literature of the past really did exist and it was possible to travel to these worlds of magic, scientifically trained modern men could move right in on them, take over their controls, and operate them with effectiveness.

  Back in the comparably humorous A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain had imagined a man of the present seizing hold of the historico-legendary past and imposing guns and railroad trains and electricity upon it—for a time, at least. But ultimately not altering it permanently. Twain was aware that the story of King Arthur didn’t go that way, and neither did Sixth Century history, and in the end thought it necessary to respect both.

  De Camp, however, had just finished rearranging Sixth Century history in Lest Darkness Fall—without backing off from what he had done. Now in “The Roaring Trumpet” and “The Mathematics of Magic,” he proved himself ready to rewrite myth and legend as well, and to leave those changes in place, too.

  These changes wouldn’t be anything as crude or as radical as Twain’s imposition of Nineteenth Century technology on a world where it just didn’t belong. De Camp and his collaborator Pratt wouldn’t dream of suggesting such a thing. They allowed that alternate worlds might have their own integrity—their own special and distinct ways of working—which could very well exclude modern paraphernalia such as guns or matches or the 1926 Boy Scout Handbook.

  They were merely ready to suggest—all in a spirit of good clean fun, mind you—that a modern man with an awareness of the scientific method might enter any of these alternate universes, discover how things work there, and then change the world permanently from within according to its own system of rules.

  That’s all.

  As presented by implication in de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall and then more and more strongly stated in “The Roaring Trumpet” and “The Mathematics of Magic,” however, this little “that’s all” offered a considerable challenge to serious modern science fiction. All
the more so when taken in conjunction with de Camp’s two-part article “The Science of Whithering,” which suggested that cyclical history must give way before the power of modern science.

  Effectively, these frivolous “fantasy” stories in Unknown were model examples of the very sort of work that the writers of serious modern science fiction should properly be attending to in their own sphere. If de Camp was capable of imagining able and confident modern men employing universal operating principles to reverse the fall of Rome or to alter the outcome of events in the world of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, then shouldn’t the writers of Astounding be able to imagine men of the new kind successfully using universal operating principles to take command of the future and outer space, the mainstream of real human possibility?

  Well, yes, they should. And John Campbell was expecting nothing less of them.

  But there were problems to be overcome. By no means the least of these was the sheer entrenched weight of the orthodox Techno Age conception of what the future was going to be like.

  This conception had been given definitive expression by Olaf Stapledon in Last and First Men. Here are to be found great sweeps of time, movement from planet to planet of the Solar System, and one form of future man succeeding another. But in the two billion years covered in this book, only one story is ever told—over and over, the cyclical rise and fall of civilization. Up the civilizations go, and down they come again, until the final fatal fall of Eighteenth Man on Neptune.

  As we know, this view hadn’t gone completely without challenge. E.E. Smith and John Campbell, L. Sprague de Camp and Isaac Asimov had all written stories that suggested the grip of cyclical history on mankind’s future might not be absolute. But even so, in 1939 and 1940, it was still a herculean task to imagine the shape of a future that wasn’t centered around the rise and fall of civilizations. If cyclical history wasn’t to be the story of our future, then what was?