Summa Risus: Collected Non-Fiction

by R. A. Lafferty

  The point is that it is always inferior porn that is dragged in, less literate than standard pornography (and that's going some), less intelligent, less inventive, with less wit and validity. With no trace of humor or geniality. It is little-boy macho (sometimes it is little-girl macho), about as ‘adult’ as an adult bookstore, puerile, and still hung-up in the sub-teenager dirty-word stage.

  And so nine-tenths of the present anthologies and issues of magazines are ruined by it. Intelligent persons set such things aside in disgust, even though only about one story in seven is so flawed.

  And another minus for SF is to be found in the apotheoses that are presented from time to time. Among the great bravura presentations that are somewhat controversial are the apotheoses. You like them or you like them not. I didn't like the apotheosis of the Roman Emperors that took place when I was around in my earlier manifestations; and I didn't like the apotheosis of his tedious pusher of fascism-for-boys (Oh, the twigs he's bent, the twigs he's bent!) which event took place in the Meuhlebach Hotel in Kansas City near the end of summer of 1976. This was in the main banquet hall, and it was as elaborate as it was stuffy. Perhaps it was appropriate that this master of fulsomeness and tedium should have a fulsome and tedious ceremony. But how were they able to draft such a crew to be fulsomeizers and tediumizers? I asked several of them about it later. “Oh, you have to go along with something like that,” they said, “it's part of science fiction.”

  There were tributes and tributes and still more tributes, many hours of them. I slept and woke and slept and woke again and they were still going on. I remembered that at the apotheosis of Roman Emperors, the tributes went on all the time while the bulls were being caught and slaughtered and then roasted whole on giant spits, and that always took many hours until they were roasted through and through. So did this take many hours.

  Most of the tribute-givers were arrant fools, but not all of them. Bob Tucker was up there. Alfred Bester was up there. How did they get such intelligent though roguish persons to take part in such concatenated and lock-step cheesiness? And the supreme tribute was to come after many hours of these lesser tributes.

  God Himself was to be involved in that supreme tribute, and the arrangers of the apotheosis believed, rightly or wrongly, that they had a commitment from God to play a part. Oh, a ceiling panel was to slide back at the climax of the ceremonies. The giant Hand of God was to come down through that opening, and the index finger was to touch this candidate for apotheosis. And then the Voice of God was to boom down through the aperture in the celing:

  “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.”

  But it didn't happen quite that way. Wouldn't you know it, the panel in the ceiling of the main dining hall of the Muehlebach stuck. It rattled and rattled but it wouldn't slide open. There was a long and tiresome and uneasy moment but it still wouldn't slide open. So the Hand of God never did come down, and the Voice of God never did sound.

  This didn't really happen? Or it didn't really didn't happen? I tell you that more than half of the people in that dining hall were rolling their eyes up towards that ceiling and muttering “Oh God Oh God Oh God!” as the thing dragged on and on, and they were pale and twitchy and nauseated by the ecstasy of it all. And yet it ended up as ‘bad show’.

  This was probably the lowest moment in the entire history of science fiction, almost the lowest moment in anything. And yet the squalid apotheosis did take place, and now Heinlein is one of the Gods.

  Who are the people in science fiction and how can you tell them apart?

  The people in science fiction are Ackerman, Aldiss, Anderson, Asimov, Ballard, Barret, Benford, Bester, Bishop, Bradbury, Bradley (M.Z.), Bloch, Bova, Brunner, Budrys, Carr, Cherryh, Brian Clarke, Arthur Clarke, Clement, Coulson, Dann, de Camp, Dickson, Dozois, Edmondson, Ellison, Emshwiller, Fehrenbach, Foster, Freas, Gerrold, Horace Gold, Goulart, Green, Gunn, Haldeman, Harding, Harrison, Heinelin, Herbert, Jakes, Janifer, Kidd, Killough, Kimmel, Knight (K.W.), Knight (D.), Lafferty, Leiber, Lowndes, Lupoff, Maclean, Martin, McCaffrey, Merril, Monteleone, Moorcock, Nelson, Niven, Norwood, Nourse, Offut, Oliver, Panshin, Pournelle, Priest, Pumilia, Purdom, Richmond, Saberhagen, Sallis, Sargent, Schmitz, Scithers, Scortia, Sheckley, Silas, Simak, Spinrad, Swain, Tucker, Tuttle, Utley, Vance, Van Vogt, Wellman, Wilder, Williamson, Wilson (Gahan), Wolfe, Wollheim, Yarbo, Zebroski, Zelazny, Davidson, Grant.

  Well these are the writers of SF ‘who matter’, though several of them are included not because of their indifferent writings but because of their bubbling personalities.

  No, of course I haven't left anybody out. Why should I leave people out? These are the meaningful ones who are with us yet (subject to update), but others have fallen asleep.

  How can one tell these vital persons apart, with or without a playbill? Fortunately there is a simple trick at hand that will get sixty percent of them in one move. There is a beautiful couplet written by myself:

  “They prove the rule of Mike and Ike

  That guys with beards all write alike.”

  I believe that this is the most trenchant and apt piece of literary criticism anywhere. And it does take care of sixty percent of the vital persons in SF. You can't tell the bearded ones apart. There's no way at all.

  What? Does this include bearded ladies? No it doesn't. I didn't include any bearded ladies on the list. I didn't consider them vital to science fiction.

  The others you can tell apart by little tricks and mannerisms, by the ways they say things or write things, by the points they make or fail to make. There aren't any real prodigies on this list, but they're the best we've got.

  What is the direction of recent SF?

  It's backwards. Abysmally backwards. I hope it won't be its permanent direction, but that's the way it's been heading lately.

  There was a man who bought a hundred thousand art calendars for one cent each. He bought them at a warehouse clearance sale. They were pretty and he was excited by the good buy he had made.

  “But what will you do with them?” his wife asked. “Haven't you noticed that they—”

  “I don't know what I'll do with them,” the man said, “but if 1946 ever comes back I've got it made.”

  1946 has come back in science fiction. Or science fiction has been dragged back to 1946. It has been dragged back there by people named del Rey and Silverberg and Pohl, and by other people too devious to even have names.

  I don't know why they wanted to drag the field back to such an inferior year as 1946, but it's a year that suits them better than it suits most other people. There is no element of nostalgia in this dragging the field way back there. Something even clammier is at work.

  But even this degradation will pass away. Then maybe there will be a real future after this sad detour.

  Is science fiction good for anything?

  Sure it is. You can move mountains with it, and you can't do that with any other literature. It is a good entertainment that strikes a responsive chord in persons of a particular group. Let that group grow! It is an enjoyment. And, because in its speculative guise it has a handy multi-view of many things, it can be used as a bridge.

  SF is the possible bridge between the ‘two cultures’. C.P. Snow and others have written extensively about the ‘two cultures’ and the suicidal gap that has developed between them. The gap is between the arty (sometimes called the humanistic) culture and the scientific and technological culture. It is the gap between the lively arts and the lively sciences, and both groups lose their liveliness as long as the gap stands. In a smaller world, that of the classic Greeks, that of the Renaissance to some extent, the gap was small or non-existent. Both the lively arts and the lively sciences were ‘musics’, things in the province of the muses. Narration was a music, so was flute-playing, lyric poetry, sculpture, drama, architecture. So was geometry, astronomy, medicine, speculation. If the gap can be bridged, then they can all become more nearly ‘musics’ again. SF offers at least a foot-bridge over the gap between
the cultures. SF is almost the only place where people of the arty and literary persuasions even know the people of the technological and scientific persuasions.

  But mainly SF is an enjoyment. That's what it's good for.

  Pick up the nuggets. Don't pick up the coprolites. There's riches to be found in this stuff if you just pick up the right things.

  Back to the Eternal Truths Department:

  1. It takes a very fat idea to weigh five hundred pounds, especially a science fiction idea.

  2. A 100-pound sack of flour will make one short story or two tall stories.

  Admittedly this is a very short list, but don't push it. Other eternal truths about science fiction may be discovered any day now.

  Back to the Cannibal Department:

  “Well,” said the soldier, “have you ever eaten any science fiction people?”

  “All we can get,” said the cannibal. “Fried they taste like pork, boiled like beef, roasted like camel. We never even bother to clean them; we don't want to lose any of that flavor. And the brains are the best part: you never know what you're going to find in their brains. And my wife has a recipe for science fiction people called ‘Fricasée of Old Magician’. It feeds four.”

  What's funny about that?

  It isn't supposed to be funny. That's what the cannibal really said. But it's a hopeful sign. People of all sorts are beginning to like us.

  Back to the Throw-Up Department:

  “— he taught me how to throw it up and catch it in a pan.”

  Well, that sort of pre-digested slurry offered as ideas is still common in SF, but not as common as it once was. We're getting better. Things are improving everywhere, and in SF most of all. Upward and onward!

  We are the very special guys.

  We make new worlds, we make new skies.

  True Believers (Verse Statement)

  Critique Authentic for a start,

  To know the betters from the worses.

  Pour out, my many-chambered heart,

  Definitive and trenchant verses.

  (The dozens of the most extreme of the “Waxwork Horrors” are omitted ere we start. Now proceed, briskly, briskly!)

  BRIAN ALDISS

  With pleasant mien he does abhor,

  All trace of commoners or peasants.

  He hasn't an iota more,

  But oh! he's got lots of presence.

  THOMAS M. DISCH

  He's not my manner nor my mood:

  Too swish for toffs, too dull for wenches.

  He's not the best nor even good,

  But oh! he is the most pretentious!

  JOHN VARLEY

  The Emperor of ‘Trendy Close’,

  A saltless meal, a tepid toddy.

  Not only does he wear no clothes,

  He doesn't even have a body.

  WILSON ‘BOB’ TUCKER

  He enters his eleventh youthe,

  He's sometimes wry and sometimes grumpy.

  He leads the chorus boys in “smooothe”,

  That stuff is really kind of bumpy.

  BEN BOVA

  He's on the verge for years anon,

  With prospects bright. “Varoom!” sounds Bova.

  The verge is worn and almost gone,

  Oh will or won't the guy go nova?

  JERRY E. POURNELLE

  He's doctorated to the gills.

  He's erudite and tall and tubby.

  He's elegant and full of skills.

  (His alter-ego's kind of grubby.)

  J.G. BALLARD

  A beach without an ocean yet,

  A cartless horse, a plotless prating.

  A dogless tail, guitarless fret,

  Oh why, oh why's he fascinating?

  SPIDER ROBINSON

  He cannot write nor yet apprise,

  He ladles with a rusty ladle.

  He's neither talented nor wise,

  But spider bites are seldom fadle.

  ROGER ZELAZNY

  A shelf of novels in a row,

  So like there is no best nor worst one.

  He did the ‘proto’ long ago,

  And cloned the others from that first one.

  STANISLAW LEM

  He has the trumpets sounds and scree,

  He has the praise of mouthers mealy.

  For international amity,

  I wish that he were better really.

  ALAN DEAN FOSTER

  He scripts for trekkies awful much,

  And rakes the green and gracious booty.

  He lacks the tone he lacks the touch,

  He mostly makes it on his beauty.

  JOHN BRUNNER

  A princely sort of raconteur,

  An off-the-cuffer, genial japer.

  His words are sparkling liter-cheur,

  Except the ones he puts on paper.

  CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO

  A brat, a fake, an urchin wit,

  She baits a lure for fish to rise to.

  I love her yet a little bit,

  But don't know why the other guys do.

  ALFRED BESTER

  He's old as I'm, his sun is set,

  His Star is Burst, his Man's Demolished.

  So why's he grin so happy yet?

  And how so puckish and so polished?

  Time for a three liner here:

  “Alfie Bester jokes are way over Alfie Bester's head.”

  “How could Alfie Bester jokes be over Alfie Bester's head?”

  “He's got a low head.”

  GENE WOLFE

  He owns nine acres of magic ground,

  The thing he grows are effervescive.

  He's quite the best of those around,

  (Those guys aren't too impressive.)

  ARTHUR C. CLARKE

  A lonely member of the clan,

  In Science Fiction bunds (deplore them!):

  The first and only gentleman,

  (There's not a lot of market for them.)

  That Moon Plaque

  HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969 WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND

  I.F. Stone, a political commentator, writing in his Washington newsletter, suggesthed that the plaque should have read—

  HERE MEN FIRST SET FOOT OUTSIDE THE EARTH ON THEIR WAY TO THE FAR STARS. THEY SPEAK OF PEACE BUT WHEREVER THEY GO THEY BRING WAR. THE ROCKETS ON WHICH THEY ARRIVED WERE DEVELOPED TO CARRY INSTANT DEATH AND CAN WITHIN A FEW MINUTES TURN THEIR GREEN PLANET INTO ANOTHER LIFELESS MOON. THEIR DESTRUCTIVE INGENUITY KNOWS NO LIMITS AND THEIR WANTON POLLUTION NO RESTRAINT. LET THE REST OF THE UNIVERSE BEWARE.

  The moon-landing (more than a mile-stone, a star-stone on the way) was the highest and cleanest material thing ever accomplished. The wording of the plaque placed on the moon was fortunate and valid: that of the plaque proposed by I.F. Stone is not.

  The two very different pronouncements illustrate the two minds of mankind: one is a clear statement of goal and accomplishment and of faith in man; the other is a compendium of all the tired and stereotyped dishonesties. For Stone's total indictment of mankind is a dishonesty.

  Whether man is regarded as an animal that rose or an angel that fell (very compromised beginning in any case), the total indictment does not apply to the very mixed creature that he is. Man is the creature who rises (or rises again) in spite of his bestial or diabolical underlay; he is the creature that does improve, and does very often improve by the stubborn method of setting up goals and then reaching them. The moon-landing is a goal set up and reached, and mankind is improved by the added aspect that comes with this.

  Always divided, often at war, most often dissolute, man has never been satisfied to remain in these states, and he will not remain in them completely. Fractured man is tenuously united in only one faith, and that is the faith in man. Failures in this faith are felt to be failures and exceptions. Chesterton once addressed a verse to a bigger man who often busted badly, but it could as well be addressed to I.F. Stone:

  There's a great t
ext in Corinthians

  Hinting that our faith entails

  Something else, that never faileth

  Yet in you, perhaps, it fails.

  But it does not fail in all, and it does not fail in most.

  True Believers (Prose Statement)

  As to Science Fiction, I am not a “True Believer”. As to Fantasy, I am no more than ten percent true believer. I respect only “True Believers” on the real things, in the eschatologies, in the ultimates, in the basics. I do not respect the “True Believers” in toys. And the “True Believers” in toys hate me completely, when they really know what I am. Though more than half of mankind does not believe in the ultimates and basics, surely less than five percent of the Science Fiction People have any belief at all in what is real. Science Fiction is, for ninety-five percent of the people who indulge in it, a surrogate “True Belief”, in things from which the truth has been carefully removed. It is a “True Belief” in a false religion, one without dimension.

  All science fiction is comic. Five percent of it is consciously comic and ninety-five percent of it is unconsciously comic. But to laugh at the often very funny ninety-five percent of it is to be put in mortal peril. The “True Believers” would kill us if they could, and perhaps they can.