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

by Alexei Panshin

  All this seemed suspicious enough to bring out agents of Military Intelligence, who feared that the security of the Manhattan Project had been compromised. So they looked up John Campbell and discussed the matter with him. They talked to Cleve Cartmill in California. They talked things over with the illustrator of the story, Paul Orban. An investigator even dropped by the Office of War Information to have a chat with Will F. Jenkins, who had a security clearance and presumably could be trusted.

  Jenkins was able to tell the agent that “Deadline” was a perfectly ordinary science fiction story of a kind that Astounding was accustomed to publishing and that it was based on material that was public knowledge:

  “I told him what I could about where Cartmill could have gotten the idea. There was a book published by the Bureau of Mines, a US Government publication, that stated definitely that when atomic energy was achieved it would be achieved through uranium.”778

  John Campbell was not only ready and willing to point out to his own interrogators the unclassified pre-war publications that were his sources, but even had the audacity to argue that Astounding should be allowed to continue to publish stories of atomic power. If the Germans were watching (and it would turn out that some of them, at least, had been; Werner von Braun, the mastermind of the German rocket program, for one, would arrange to keep getting his own personal copy of Astounding all through the war), then it might very well seem suspicious if the magazine were to suddenly cease printing stories on this long-established topic.

  Indeed, it is quite possible that Campbell went on to argue that since he had declared so publicly that actual secret research wouldn’t be compromised in Astounding, for the magazine to continue to publish atomic stories would be to actively mislead the enemy into thinking that we weren’t working on the Bomb. Whatever he actually said, the arguments the editor made were accepted by his questioners and their superiors, and Astounding was left to go its own way.

  “Deadline” wasn’t all that much of a story, and it wasn’t innovative SF. But for years to come, this episode would be recounted with pride, and not a little glee, as evidence of the reality and seriousness of science fictional prediction.

  Another squeeze suffered by Campbell after the beginning of the war—a direct result of the loss of his full-time authors, and the time pressures on those writers who remained—was in serial novels. There would be several long stretches during the war when no serial story was running in Astounding.

  Typically, Campbell would attempt to pass off these periods of shortage as the result of well-considered editorial policy. He would suggest that Astounding was not publishing serial novels out of concern for servicemen in the field, who might find it difficult to catch up with every installment of a multi-part story. In actual practice, however, it seemed that whenever the editor was able to get his hands on a halfway decent serial story, he wouldn’t hesitate to publish it, even though it might have to be spread out over four issues.

  The one top writer who was left to Campbell with the departure of the other giants of the early Golden Age was A.E. van Vogt. He would be the editor’s great surety in the difficult days of 1942 and early 1943, when one after another of Campbell’s writers was putting the cover on his typewriter and stowing it away in the closet.

  Van Vogt’s presence lent continuity to the magazine which otherwise would have been lost, and his industry assured that Campbell had a good head start each month toward filling the pages of his next issue. Beginning with his return to writing with “Recruiting Station” in March 1942, van Vogt would have contributions in eleven of the fourteen remaining issues of the bedsheet Astounding.

  In these stories, as we have seen, van Vogt insisted upon the connectivity and responsiveness of the universe, and the necessity for sentient beings to cooperate with each other. By the time he wrote “The Weapon Shop” and “The Search,” he had moved beyond this to imagine men and women with the character and capacity to serve as a permanent opposition force guaranteeing individual justice and freedom within a tyrannical society, or even the ability to function as an organization of immortal observers who have the power to stand outside the stream of time and direct the ongoing flow of human history like beneficent gods.

  The culmination of this sequence of visions of potential human responsibility came with the serialization of van Vogt’s second novel, The Weapon Makers, from February to April 1943, the last three issues of the bedsheet Astounding. Here van Vogt attempted to give a definitive answer to the question he had raised two years earlier in “Repetition”: What quality in man would render him fit to attain the stars and to rule the galaxy?

  The structure of The Weapon Makers was quite unusual, and perhaps not altogether successful, with frequent inversions of time sequence and with separate narrative lines that never quite managed to meet. It was perfectly possible that a reader might find this story frustrating, fragmented and incoherent—even for A.E. van Vogt.

  However, if we look at The Weapon Makers from just the proper angle with just the proper squint, it is possible for us to see it as having less of the nature of a conventional novel of any kind we are familiar with, and more of the form and approach of an out-of-time Greek play in science fiction clothing. Here, even before the story begins, a central happening of cosmic importance has taken place. In the story proper, human beings of varying role and stature must react to that event, and, as they contend, they reveal something of the essential quality of being human. Finally, at the conclusion of the story, a cathartic assessment of the situation is rendered by a non-human higher observer.

  The offstage universe-altering event that underlies The Weapon Makers is the invention of the “infinity drive”779 and the human attainment of interstellar travel.

  A brilliant scientist and his assistants have made the first flight between the stars, only to be marooned by a greedy subordinate on a desert planet hurtling in a figure-eight orbit around the twin suns of Alpha Centauri. That underling has now returned to an Earth society marked on every level by immorality and amorality, where he has entered into secret negotiations with the Empress Innelda Isher to sell her the interstellar drive, which she intends to suppress.

  The Empress is the living embodiment of the conservative aspect of human nature, even though she is “ ‘restless and adventure-minded’ ”780 and surrounds herself with a personal retinue of young hotbloods. It is her fear that public knowledge of the interstellar drive will send human beings hurtling off in all directions and mean the end of the 5000-year history of the Isher Empire.

  The continuing counterforce to the Empire is, of course, the Weapon Shops—“an independent, outlawed, indestructible, altruistic opposition to tyranny.”781 Here, too, paradox is involved, since even though this organization represents the rebellious, individualistic, questing element of human nature, the men of the Weapon Shops Council seem a personally restrained and cautious lot who must act in concert if they are to act at all. However, when the most farseeing of the Weapon Makers, Edward Gonish—a “No-man”782 or trained intuitionist who only has to know ten percent of the facts of any situation in order to grasp the entirety—understands in a flash that there is such a thing as the interstellar drive and that the Empress aims to keep it a secret, there is no question but that the Weapon Shops will do whatever they can to see it made public.

  The Weapon Makers has two different protagonists. One is an ordinary man, an asteroid miner named Dan Neelan. His twin brother, Gil, with whom he has an extraordinary degree of rapport, was one of the assistants of the scientist who invented the infinity drive. Neelan, having lost his lifelong sense of contact with his brother and believing that this must mean he is dead, has returned to Earth to discover what happened to him.

  This is certainly one selfless and single-minded man. After he has discovered that his brother has been marooned among the stars, and then is able to gain control of the interstellar drive, Neelan falls into the hands of the Empress. But neither desire for the riches she has to
offer, nor fear of the torture she threatens him with and then subjects him to, can cause him to divulge the secret he is holding. His only concern is to follow his brother to the stars and help him in any way he can.

  The other protagonist, Robert Hedrock, is a personage of greater size and broader aims. He is described to us as someone of “striking appearance, mental brilliance and strong personality.”783 Even though he is an acknowledged agent of the Weapon Shops, a member of their Council, he has presented himself at Innelda Isher’s palace, the one man bold enough to seek her hand in marriage, and has been made a Captain in her Guard.

  In fact, as we will come to be told, “he is Earth’s only immortal man, with private long-range purposes of his own, transcending any temporary commitment he might make.”784 Robert Hedrock is only his latest name. This man has had many different identities.

  Long ago, he was the first Isher Emperor.

  He was also Walter S. de Lany, the founder of the Weapon Shops.

  At various moments since, when balance and reinvigoration have been called for, he has served as the husband of an Isher Empress. On other occasions, he has been a leader of the Weapon Shops. At still other times, he has pursued the mystery of his own immortality and sought to make it a universal condition of man.

  What these different persons and forces—the Empress, Dan Neelan, Robert Hedrock, and the Weapon Shops—have in common is the quality of altruism:

  It is a given that the Weapon Makers are altruistic, as even Innelda Isher is ready to admit at those moments when she isn’t doing her best to annihilate them. In one unusually candid moment, she describes them as “ ‘a stabilizing influence’ ”785 in the current societal atmosphere of pervasive selfishness and corruption. And she even goes on to say, “ ‘I am counting particularly upon a new method of mind training recently released by the Weapon Shops, which strengthens moral functions as well as performing everything that other methods are noted for.’ ”786

  The mysterious Robert Hedrock is an idealist and an altruist beyond even the ability of the Weapon Makers to comprehend. They are made so nervous by his unfathomable nature and motives that they are prepared to execute him just to have life once again be something they think they understand.

  Even Edward Gonish, the No-man, cannot get his head around the whole of Hedrock. However, enough of Hedrock’s pattern is visible to him that Gonish feels able to say, “ ‘Everything the man has ever said or done shows an immense and passionate interest in the welfare of the race.’ ”787

  Next to Hedrock, Dan Neelan is an ephemeral being. But within his more limited frame of reference, he, too, is an altruist, caring far more for his brother’s welfare than his own. And as soon as he has escaped from the control of the Empress, Neelan heads straight for the stars in search of his lost twin.

  While he is in the depths of space, he is encountered by an immense ship full of spider-like higher aliens. These are cool, remote, thoughty beings whose lives have been conducted in accordance with the old Techno Age rule of the survival of the fittest. As they eventually describe themselves to Neelan: “ ‘All of us here present are immortal, the winners in the struggle for supremacy and existence on our planet. Each and every one of us is supreme in some one field by virtue of having destroyed all competition.’ ”788

  The immediate judgment the spiders make of Neelan is that he is not very bright—“ ‘Intelligence type nine hundred minus. . . .’ ”789 But gradually these emotionless Big Brains become intrigued by his devotion to his brother, and by the rapport that exists between the two. Such a bond is unique in their experience and deserving of special study.

  Even the Empress Innelda Isher—who can be selfish, willful and cruel—is capable of behaving altruistically. We know that she fears what the interstellar drive will do to the secure eternal Isherness of things. We are also aware that she is afraid of death, and that she has been told by her doctors that if she should ever have a child, it will be at the cost of her life.

  But yet, as soon as she gains even an inkling of Robert Hedrock’s special role in human affairs, she is ready to offer knowledge of the infinity drive to the Weapon Shops in exchange for his life. What is more, despite the fact that she is unable to tolerate the fact of his immortality or the personal relationships he has had with past Isher empresses, she will marry Hedrock in order to have his child and continue the Isher line—even though she knows that to do so means her death.

  The spiderish alien observers—whose assessment of themselves is that they have taken the wrong path and are ultimately not to be reckoned one of Nature’s successes—are puzzled and awed by Innelda Isher’s readiness to sacrifice herself, just as they were previously impressed by the unselfish behavior of Dan Neelan.

  The last line of The Weapon Makers is their final judgment of mankind:

  “ ‘This much we have learned; here is the race that shall rule the sevagram.’ ”790

  What an epitomally thunderous van Vogtian exit line! And what a marvelously exotic and resonant word to introduce without any explanation at the very end of a story!

  As it is used here, “sevagram” seems clearly intended to stir images in the reader’s mind of the broadest conceivable vistas. It would appear to mean at least this galaxy, maybe other galaxies, perhaps even the entire multiverse.

  At the same time, however, while this word might be obscure to van Vogt’s American readers, it was in contemporary use. Sevagram was the name of the ashram recently established by Mahatma Gandhi in India. In Hindi, this word meant “village of service.”791

  The wider universe perceived as a mere village . . . The ruler whose true obligation is recognized as service to others . . . Above all, the identification of altruistic behavior as the essence of mankind’s higher potential, uniting the aspect of humanity which remembers and maintains man’s restless questing spirit, his ephemeral individual nature, and his mysterious immortality . . . Wonderful ideas indeed to find expressed in a sometimes clumsy and disorganized pulp science fiction serial in the middle of World War II!

  But A.E. van Vogt, though he might labor valiantly all of the day and into the night to produce stories for John Campbell, couldn’t fill the pages of Astounding all by himself. Campbell had to have other regular writers to keep the magazine going. The place where he looked for them was Unknown.

  Back in 1939 and 1940, the weight of editorial pressure had all been in the other direction, with Campbell doing his best to convince science fiction writers like van Vogt, Heinlein and Williamson to produce stories for his new fantasy magazine. Now, however, with Unknown Worlds on a bimonthly schedule and only half the market it had formerly been, and with Astounding losing all of its most dependable contributors, it made sense to Campbell to drop a line to one after another of his fantasy authors and suggest that Astounding would welcome submissions if they cared to have a try at writing science fiction.

  Cleve Cartmill, the author of “Deadline,” was one of these. Another was William Anthony Parker White, a writer of mysteries under the name H.H. Holmes (including the 1942 novel Rocket to the Morgue, set in Heinlein’s Mañana Literary Society of happy memory), who in recent times had become an occasional writer for Unknown under the pseudonym Anthony Boucher. Yet another was Fritz Leiber, Jr., who had just finished an experimental stint as a teacher at Occidental College and delivered a fantasy novel to Campbell about witchcraft in academe based on his experience. The editor was pressing him to have a try at a science fiction novel next.

  But the one writer whom Campbell singled out from Unknown to write for Astounding on a full-time basis was Henry Kuttner. On past record, this was a most unlikely choice.

  Henry Kuttner was born in Los Angeles on April 7, 1914.792 His father, a bookseller, died when he was only five. Kuttner’s mother then took him and his older brothers to San Francisco, where, for a time at least, she ran a boardinghouse.

  Beyond this, what happened to him as a child isn’t clear, except that it was traumatic. Kuttner wasn’t a pe
rson who was much given to talking about himself. After his death in 1958, however, John Campbell would speak in a letter to Isaac Asimov about the “rotten start”793 Kuttner had had in life and “the terrible psychic wounds he’d been given,”794 without elaborating on the subject.

  The effect of his injuries is somewhat easier to see. Kuttner grew up a reader and a loner, with an acute sense of having been excluded from the world of literature and intellect that was his birthright. He started drinking at an early age, and often drank too much, and when he did he would flip-flop between feelings of bitterness and rage and feelings of total personal worthlessness.

  Kuttner the man was a shy, bright-eyed mouse with a wry, deadpan sense of humor, a tendency to quote someone he’d been reading rather than offering an opinion of his own, and an infinite ability to say no by saying nothing at all. If you wanted to pick up on his wit, you had to lean in his direction and overhear him.

  His wife, C.L. Moore, tells us that expressed over and over again in his work was a fundamental theme: “Hank’s basic statement was something like, ‘Authority is dangerous and I will never submit to it.’ ”795 (Her own essential fictional statement, she says, was “ ‘The most treacherous thing in life is love’ ”796—though a possibly more accurate rephrasing might be: “The most threatening thing in life is overwhelming sexual passion.”)

  Kuttner’s first published story, “The Graveyard Rats” (Weird Tales, Mar. 1936), was written in imitation of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft, who was then very near the end of his life, was an assiduous correspondent with the other writers of Weird Tales, and it was he who first put Kuttner and Moore in touch with each other.