Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  There is a wealth of fine ideas in this story, including a philosophical justification for a cult of violence (as opposed to Gandhian nonviolence) to counter the conditioning leading to the enslavement by the "skins." Here, Farmer's om-nipresent sense of humor, which grimaces in even the most solemn of his efforts, plays him false. Rastignac the Devil degenerates into a satiric farce where the "ancient secret" of using alcohol to get drunk renders the "skins" ineffective, and the obvious parody of Seabury Quinn's popular occult detec-tive, Jules de Grandin, with exclamations of "Sacre Bleu!" by clergyman Father Jules, makes it impossible to take the story seriously.

  This same wild sense of humor came close to blasting Farmer's reputation in Daughter (thrilling wonder sto-ries, Winter, 1945), a sequel to Mother. Expecting something equally fascinating and thought-provoking, readers were giv-en a spoof of Mother, told in the vein of The Three Little Pigs. Actually, Daughter is extremely clever and good fun, but to readers approaching it without warning soon after reading Mother it was devastatingly disappointing.

  Only a single story by Philip Jose Farmer appeared during 1955 and 1956 when he all but abandoned writing to nurse his economic wounds and regain the will to try again. That story was a not altogether successful novelette, Father (fan-tasy and science fiction, July, 1955), with a plot so ambi-tious that it must have been a prime factor in provoking Alfred Bester to comment: "Mr. Farmer has too much engine for his rear axle." The story concerned one gigantic "Man" who has fathered an entire planet's life forms and offers a Bishop, a friend of Father Carmody's, a chance to play temporary God while he is on a leave of absence. It is in this story that Father Carmody takes on character as a rather pious incarnation of Jack Williamson's Giles Habibula. How he got that way was revealed two years later in The Night of the Light (fantasy and science fiction, June, 1957).

  A minor success was scored with the novel The Green Odyssey, published as an original paperback by Ballantine Books in June, 1957. The very humor which frequently misfired in Farmer's other works engagingly redeems the saga of an Earthman, stranded on a far planet in a medieval stage of development, endeavoring to reach a spaceship he learns has landed in a far country.

  Perhaps it was L. Sprague de Camp's special wit that made Farmer so fond of that author for not only does The Green Odyssey bear some relationship to the Krishna stories but The Alley Man (fantasy and science fiction, June, 1959) was unquestionably a different approach to de Camp's ideas in The Gnarly Man. It attempted a prolonged slice-of-life character sketch of a Neanderthal man who has survived to the present day. Basing the personality of his Neanderthal man on that of someone he actually knew, Farmer managed to write a successful character sketch, but it almost failed as a science-fiction story, predominantly because the fantasy element was so slight.

  More positively, a short novel written under the title of My Sister's Brother and published as Open to Me, My Sister ranks with The Lovers and Mother as one of Farmer's best. It was rejected by Campbell with a comment to the effect that the physical descriptions and implications made him feel ill. Farmer's outline of the method of reproduction of a race of very humanlike Martians was enough to unsettle even unsqueamish stomachs. Still, unpleasantly or not, Farmer had something to say, and the rich, imaginative fabric he brocad-ed in presenting the Martian culture was the work of a master craftsman. Robert Mills, editor of fantasy and science fiction, had first rejected the story. It was accepted by Leo Margulies and under the title of The Strange Birth was actually set in type for the June, 1959, satellite science fiction, with three illustrations by John Giunta. The magazine was killed before any copies came from the presses, but several sets of page proofs were run off and exist as collector's items. Mills changed his mind about the story and summoned the courage to publish it as Open to Me, My Sister in the May, 1960, fantasy and science fiction.

  Beyond its story quality, Open to Me, My Sister was the indication of Philip Jose Farmer's psychological recovery from his bitter disappointments. His unique talent was not to be lost to the field. Not that smooth sailing lay ahead, fantasy and science fiction promptly rejected a novelette titled The Screaming Goddess. Horace L. Gold, editor of galaxy magazine, asked Farmer to expand the story into a novel for Beacon Books, who, in 1960, were publishing "Galaxy Novels," a series with a sexy slant. Flesh, the enlarged story, had the dubious distinction of being the only novel that Beacon cut because it was too hot to publish as written.

  The hero of Flesh is a significantly altered man, capable of prodigious virile prowess, who is utilized as a religious sex symbol in a procession from Washington, D.C., to Pough-keepsie, New York, where he is ultimately to be ceremonially slaughtered. Though Farmer's tongue was in his cheek, Flesh, accepted in the frame of its publisher's special requirements, must be recommended; as a fine effort. A seduction scene was written as an introduction to Moth and Rust, and it, too, enjoyed the special privilege of appear-ing in 1960 as a Galaxy/Beacon effort under the provocative title of A Woman a Day. A try at a "mainstream" novel in Fire and the Night was issued as an original paperback by Regency Books, Chicago, in 1962. The story, concerning an affair between a married Negro woman and a white man, is a thoroughly professional and competent job.

  At his worst, he can be undisciplined, verbose, in bad taste, and indiscriminate in his blend of literary influences. There are times when he works so hard at character develop-ment that he slows the story. When it comes to ideas he lacks a sense of proportion. On the one hand, he will nurse a pet notion through 20,000 precisely developed words as though it were the last note of originality he would ever strike. On the other hand, he will throw ideas like a boxer whose every punch is a haymaker. At his best, he ranks at the very top of the writers to emerge in science fiction during the decade of the fifties. No single new author of that era approaches him in strength, originality, and fecundity of ideas. Few authors in the history of the field match his ability to exploit the implications of imaginative concepts. His immense respect for logical extrap-olation dates back to Hugo Gernsback, and because of this most of his stories breathe the "sense of wonder." When not rushed, he is topped only by Theodore Sturgeon and Richard Matheson in adaptability of style or word pattern to fit a special situation. Lack of racial bias in his work extends to his writing techniques, which incorporate much of what is good from both new and old science fiction and from the literary world outside.

  Despite the spontaneous acclaim accorded some of his works, Philip Jose Farmer is still underrated. This is the result of a tendency to credit his reputation to sensationalism and from the appearance of a sizable portion of his fiction in secondary and lightly held markets.

  Farmer is much more than a taboo breaker. Sex is not his only topic. As much, if not more, of his writing centers around religion. In a field as sensitive to sex and as careful of avoiding religious offense as science fiction, the merchandis-ing potential of his subject matter is self-limiting. This should not be permitted to disguise the fact that he is a storyteller of high artistry, and at least a few of his works have an air of permanence about them.

  23 STARBURST

  There is no substitute for hindsight in literary appraisal. Most of the authors evaluated in this book are still in active production. Time may bring either greater stature or diminu-tion of popularity, and there is much to be said for both the inaugurators and the popularizers. Edgar Allan Poe crystal-lized the notion of the extraordinary deductive sleuth with C. Auguste Dupin, but Sherlock Holmes is no less a classic because A. Conan Doyle built upon an established for-mula.

  There are several writers who have made contributions to the art of science fiction notable enough to be acknowledged, but who, with one outstanding exception, have not as yet influenced or had time to influence the direction of the literature. The exception is the Englishman Clive Staples Lewis. Until the age of 31 an acknowledged atheist, Lewis swung to the extreme of Christian fundamentalism, believing that every reference in the Bible was literal truth; he was undeniably evangelist
ic thereafter in proclaiming the faith. He was a master stylist and so skilled a literary debater that he was frequently accused of bringing to an argument for religious belief as much guile, cunning, and adroitness as the devil's disciples brought into play against it. His acceptance as an important modern voice on theology is all the more surprising since he argued not just for the living God, but for the existence of the angelic hosts and the physical reality of the devil, and he proclaimed a fervent belief in the reality of the vi-sions of Milton and Dante. Those very notions he incorporated into science fiction with Out of the Silent Planet (The Bodley Head, London, 1938), a novel of the planet Mars, where live three alien races who have never fallen from grace, ruled over by an angel. Each of the planets has such an angel as its spiritual leader, all in communion with God, except Earth, which is the "occupied territory" of the Dark Angel and has not been heard from since the fall of man.

  Earlier evangelistic interplanetary tales were usually such contrived absurdities as to relegate them to the limbo of curiosa. Lewis' avid affection for science fiction helped give the background of his novel a ring of authenticity, which, teamed with a superior literary style, brought his work seri-ous attention. Perelandra (Macmillan, 1944) possessed more inherent drama than Out of the Silent Planet, to which it was a sequel. This time Venus is the locale, and an Earth scientist acts as a minion of Satan to compromise the Eve of this emerging world. The struggle between the scientist who would bring about her downfall and the philologist who would save her is on both an intellectual and a physical level. The third novel of the trilogy, That Hideous Strength (John Lane, London, 1945), tells of the efforts of the Devil, through the auspices of The National Institute of Co-Ordinated Experiments, to regiment and reshape man to his own evil designs.

  During a period when space travel was emerging as a scientific and engineering probability, Lewis contributed to making science-fiction writers conscious of the story possibili-ties of the confrontation of the more rigid precepts of reli-gion with the realities of the space age. Robert A. Heinlein showed very clearly the dangers to human progress of theo-cratic dictatorship, as did Fritz Leiber and Isaac Asimov. However, it was Ray Bradbury who, in The Man and In This Sign, provided the bridge between C. S. Lewis and the main body of science fiction in the magazines.

  Religious themes have given two other authors special recognition in science fiction. The first is James Blish, a workmanlike writer previously best known for his Okie series, about independent self-propelled cities of the future which voyage from world to world in search of life-prolonging drugs (Earthman, Come Home, Putnam, 1955).

  Possibly inspired by reading Bradbury's In This Sign, Blish had published (in if, September, 1953) A Case of Con-science, telling of Lithia, a world fifty light years from Earth, where a Catholic priest encounters a race of intelligent rep-tiles who are apparently without original sin. His suspicion of a satanic trap of cosmic scope ends in irony when one of the idyllic monstrosities gives him, as a parting gift, a fertilized egg to take back to Earth, with implications that it may be a new "Christ" in a scaly, grotesque guise.

  The original short novel was extended for the paperback version of A Case of Conscience (Ballantine Books, 1958). The hatched reptile grows to maturity on Earth, where it acts dangerously against established moral precepts. When word is received that the alien is on his way back to his world of origin, the priest contemplates with horror that conceivably it will prove to be the proverbial "snake" which will bring about the "fall" of the Lithians. Desperately he resorts to exorcism via long-range television focused on Lithia to test its reality. When that world dissolves in space, he is convinced that it was all a snare of the Devil from which he has saved mankind, even though the more logical explanation of the explosion of a fusion plant under construction is diagnosed as the actual cause.

  A Case of Conscience won the Hugo as the best science-fiction novel of 1958. A short story on a religious theme by Arthur C. Clarke, The Star (infinity science fiction, November, 1955), had previously received a Hugo as the best short story of 1955.

  Further confirming the interest of science-fiction readers in the adjustments of religion to events of the future was the award of a Hugo to Walter M. Miller, Jr., for Canticle for Leibowitz. as the best novel of 1960. It was the second such honor he had received; the first was for the novelette The Darfsteller, published in 1954, an angry expostulation against the slow usurpation of man by machine. The awards had not been unexpected, for Miller had displayed exceptional prom-ise ever since his first story appeared in the American mer-cury in 1950. He remained the perennially promising author until three novelettes from the magazine of fantasy and science fiction were expanded into A Canticle for Leibowitz and published by Lippincott in 1959.

  The critical reviews in and out of the science-fiction world were enthusiastic. The story revolved about the Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz, a flickering light in a world dissolved in darkness after atomic holocaust. St. Leibowitz, was an atomic scientist who had been canonized (after hanging) as the spiritual inspiration of a Catholic order. A Canticle for Leibowitz is very much an answer to Robert Heinlein's warn-ing, " ... If This Goes On," against the tyranny of religious dominance. The Church of A Canticle for Leibowitz, in every aspect of its dogma and ritual, is bent upon restoring through its rigmarole, the human race. Sense slowly crystal-lizing from the nonsense, the story proceeds with such high humor and fine characterization from era to era, that it is a joy to read. The ending fails to do justice to the superb narrative line. Perhaps it would have been enough if only, as the final spaceship of monks escapes from a war-blasted Earth, the tottering figure of The Wandering Jew, who threads like the conscience of mankind through the entire history, made one final appearance to wave his basket hat in farewell. Despite this, A Canticle for Leibowitz remains the high point of those stories which may be designated as religious novels to appear in the science-fiction magazines.

  One author who today might be rated with the giants of modern science fiction—with Heinlein, Sturgeon, Van Vogt, and Asimov—if only he had continued to write, is L. Ron Hubbard. Recruited from the adventure pulps where he had been a superior stylist capable of touches of human interest that evoked comparison with the great pulp air story writer George Bruce, he ably carried this talent into science fiction when recruited by John W. Campbell. His three-part novel

  Final Blackout, which began in the April, 1940, astounding science-fiction, was a stunning achievement, certainly the most powerful and readable "warning" story that had ap-peared in science fiction to that date. The progress of today's events has made much of Final Blackout prophetic—and just as much of it outdated. Hub-bard, in his introduction to the hard-cover edition (Hadley Pub. Co., Providence, Rhode Island, 1948), played down the story and stressed the prophecy. Time has highlighted the story and downgraded the prophecy. There have been many incisive predictions cast in fiction form in the past. Final Blackout's real strength rests in Hubbard's characterization of the superhuman leadership qualities of The Lieutenant, mak-ing it a masterpiece in a literature where good characteriza-tion is rare. As a story it grips the reader from the first sen-tence and will not release him until the author is through. The readers waited for Hubbard to come back from the war. When he did his red hair had become pure white from suffering caused by injuries, and it was some years before its normal color began to return; it was years more before his writing seemed to assume its old magic. For a flash, in To the Stars (astounding science-fiction, March-April, 1950), in which a still youthful spaceman returns to Earth and searches for the young girl he left behind, to find her, finally, an aged crone, he came near to writing the most effective human drama based upon the time dilatation effect.

  One month later, astounding science-fiction, May, 1950, published his article Dianetics, the Evolution of a Science, and L. Ron Hubbard was launched on a new career which marked a point of no return as far as his science-fiction writing was concerned.

  A major landmark
in science fiction may be credited to Hal Clement, pen name of Harry Clement Stubbs, a New England science teacher who reflects his specialty in his writing. In Mission of Gravity (astounding science-fic-tion, April to July, 1953), a novel dealing with the problems or recovering recorded information from a rocket probe grounded on a planet with nearly 700 times the gravitational pull of the earth, he wrote what is generally regarded as the epic of the scientific problem story in science fiction. As a solution for his problem he worked out the biological attributes for an alien race capable of living on this world and involved them in supplying the muscle for the recovery problem. To add to the interest, a good portion of the story is told from the viewpoint of the aliens.

  Previously Clement had distinguished himself with a clev-erly fabricated interplanetary detective story, Needle, with both the hunted and the hunter aliens, serialized in astound-ing science-fiction, May and June, 1949.

  There is a tendency to regard the format of Mission of Gravity and the style of its author, Hal Clement, as a throwback to the earlier days of science fiction, when Hugo Gernsback set policy and heavy science was more in the vogue. The implication is present that if the old science fiction had consistently produced material as provocative as Mission of Gravity, modern readers and critics would display more tolerance toward science fiction's pioneers. Actually this type of story is a manifestation of science fiction's modern development.

  In truth, the popularizer of the scientific problem story was actually Ross Rocklynne in a series of stories about an inter-planetary policeman, Lt. Jack Colbie, who pursues criminal Edward Deverel in and out of a number of cosmic traps, beginning with the problem of getting out of the interior of a hollow planet in At the Center of Gravity (astounding stories, June, 1936), and ending with the problem of escap-ing from the frictionless concave mirror on a newly discovered planet in The Men and the Mirror (astounding science-fiction, July, 1939).