Let us take, for example, a book written many years ago by me, The Demolished Man. It is old now but since so many people seem to be still interested in it, I will explain what the emotions were in putting this book together. In the first place you should all understand (not my colleagues, because they all know about this) that I am a working writer, I am a working stiff, I am not an entirely science fiction writer—I am an everything writer as indeed we all are.
So, when I was first approached by Horace Gold who was then editor of Galaxy Magazine, and when he asked me if I would write something for him, I was a little surprised. I was rather busy writing radio scripts at the moment. We discussed various ideas and I submitted several proposals to him. I can recall that two of the proposals were:
1. Would it be possible to do an interesting story about a time and a future in which the people will have time-scanners which can scan back into the past so that it will be impossible for a criminal to commit a crime and get off, because with the time-scanners they could go back to the origin of the crime to find out who the guilty parties are, and of course arrest them? I thought this would make an interesting conflict.
2. Another suggestion I had, in a half dozen of them, was that I thought: could there be a time in the future when people who are trading agents should be perhaps more versed in psychiatry, in the understanding of other areas, or perhaps even capable of extra-sensory perception, so that they can help train them in the races with whom the people of the world really have no sympathetical understanding?
There were five other ideas, one of which Horace kicked out; and then he said, "Why not do a story about a crime committed in the future in which there is extra sensory perception? Let us combine two of these ideas. What will extra sensory perception do? These are the law enforcements against crime: what will telepathy do?" And we discussed it on the phone (Horace at the time was in bed in his apartment; he was suffering from frightful agoraphobias as a result of his war experiences—so we were on the telephone very often). I was quasi-interested in it, because quite frankly the idea of writing a science fiction novel terrified me. But, as we discussed the idea of a telepathic society, or a semi-telepathic society and what influences it might have on life as we knew it, I became more and more interested; and then I did something which writers often do: I wrote a "bubble" number 1. [I'd better explain that: in the old days when an act came on it was introduced with what was called a D-Board No. 1, which was a high upbeat exciting introduction to the act to follow.] I did that with what subsequently became The Demolished Man. I also did it with another novel which followed it, and submitted it to Horace Gold who was enthusiastic enough about it to get me started on the writing.
Now, I had not yet fallen in love with the book. I remember the moment when I fell in love with the book quite well. It was the moment when I was attempting to describe the sort of evening party, the evening events which we had all week long, but exclusively in terms of telepaths. And I tried very hard to think of what special quality this party might have, and I thought of the many parties which I had given or attended (since I come essentially from the entertainment business). I thought of parties given for entertainment people, all of whom speak the same slang, who all know the same jokes, and who are very quick and very hip and up-to-the-moment on everything—and I thought: how could I translate that into telepathy? At the same time I suddenly recalled embarrassing experiences when a square, a civilian from the middle west, would by accident come to one of these parties and be completely out of place. Every line of dialogue would be a source of embarrassment; we would all blush, and try to cover up. And it was from all that, that I more or less extrapolated into the telepathic party which I tried to describe; and then, of course, came this great notion of doing it in a typographical pattern, in geometrical forms. I spent about two days in my workshop working it out and I was so pleased with it, so delighted with the entire dimensions that all the various visual effects that one could achieve in writing could do to this story, that at this moment I fell in love with it.
Now, at the moment I fell in love with it I began to drive down very, very hard; as hard as I could. I was in constant discussion with Horace Gold; we discussed many ideas; we dismissed many ideas, we adopted many, but always the central theme was: the open-mystery story. I must explain that I had been until then, in radio, a mystery writer. And there were in those days two forms of writing: there was that of the English mystery in which Body A is found and Body X is found, and Body Y, and so forth and so on, when no one knows what the hell is going on until the last scene, the explaining scene to which the whole thing is tied up. These long and interminable expositions of where, when, you know: Joe got into Max's taxi-cab and he didn't know that Max was keeping Bubbles le Grand who was really financing the entire Mafiosa organization, but he did know that the Mafia was double-crossing him. You go mad with this thing and then where are you? It is endless. Many of you, I am sure, have been forced to go through that.
The other form of mystery which we wrote was the open-mystery, in which you play the events, the conflicts and the acts of violence, as they occur. You keep no secrets from your audience except one secret. The secret either of motivation-why the killer has killed-or, secondly, the gimmick: how he or she killed. These little things you hold back for that additional suspense. It occurred to me that this Demolished Man was a marvelous opportunity to do a new form of open-murder mystery. That is, to do a chase in which we lay out the events, event by event; in which we give the motivation, but actually we are cheating on that because the protagonist—who is the killer—does not really know his own motivation. It is concealed within himself and we are now deeply involved in psychiatry. And if any follower of Freud's objects to what I say, I apologize, but this is the thing that really grabbed me.
Now, the three critical points in writing a novel for me—and I am speaking for all of us—are these: First, the attack. There must be a tremendous attack on a story. In fact, I have always believed that the first-rate writer starts a story at the point where a fifth-rate writer stops it. You start at the peak of the action and then you move on. This is, for me, the first big problem.
The second problem is, of course, the mid-point, because at this point you suffer from fatigue. You have been re-reading your manuscript over and over again to get the flow and the tempo, to see if you are headed in the right direction. After you have read it for about 479 times, it begins to occur to you that it is a little bit boring. You get a little tired of it and you say to yourself, "The hell with it! This thing is no good; let's forget it!" It is at this point that you must have the courage to say, "Look, if I liked it enough to start it, it must still be good. I will finish it." But if you are lucky—and indeed I was lucky—you can find a new gimmick at the mid-point which will recharge you with enthusiasm. I found mine in a very curious way. I was writing the book at a cottage we have at a Fire Island beach; I was fishing one afternoon, without luck, and once I was minding my own business casting for fish, suddenly the idea of typography jumped into my mind and suddenly I thought: Good God, it could be possible in the future that people's names could be spelled instead of with letters—they could be spelled typographically. I grabbed my fishing rod, I rushed back to the cottage, spent an entire afternoon next day working out all sorts of typographical gimmicks; this was enough to charge me through the midpoint to get on towards the finishing.
Thirdly, now. The 3/4-mark in a novel is also very dangerous because you start with an earthquake and build to a climax. Well, this is the problem in novel-writing: you start with an earthquake and you try to build to a climax, and at the 3/4-mark you say, "My God, where is my climax? What I have planned seems too flat, what can I do?" If you are courageous and faithful you will say, "The original climax that I planned must be good and I will go through with it." If you are lucky a new idea will come to you which locks in with everything you have done before and this, indeed, did happen to me. A new idea came to me—a new idea which was act
ually not a new idea but was a put-down of an old idea. The old paranoic idea of philosophy in which "I am truly the only reality and the rest of the universe is false" occurred to me: why not take this and put it down? Take a man, whom I am going to break to pieces, and let him suffer from this rather common concept which most young men in college are playing with off and on. But we'll take it and instead of merely putting it down we will turn it into the novelist's typographical device to achieve a tempo and a finale to the story which will really rack everybody up—because, after all, we are all professional writers and we have only one intent, which is to tell a story to entertain, to grab them, to rack them up, to knock them around. And when we are finished with them, to leave them gasping.
I am not putting down the philosophy of science fiction or the meaning of it, or what great contributions it makes to philosophy. All I am saying is what we professional writers are trying most to do is to draw from within ourselves. Every bit of color, every bit of experience, every gimmick we have used, or seen, we steal (just as much as everybody else) we will take, we will transpose. We will do anything in the world to leave our readers gasping.
But here I am, not describing science fiction writing—I am describing writing itself.
Nowadays science fiction writers seem to be rather jealous because they feel—and perhaps rightly—that the contemporary novel receives a lot more attention and a lot more respect than the science fiction novels which very often are much better than contemporary novels. The science fiction authors feel a little jealous, a little hurt, and a little irritated by this. Which brings me to my point, and it is this: Science fiction is iconoclastic; science fiction is stimulating. I do not care what its pretenses are to philosophy, or to science, or to anything like that. The important thing is that it is mind-stretching, it stretches the imagination, it stretches the mind, and for this reason it is adored by young people, particularly, or by older people who still have young minds, who enjoy having their minds stretched.
The contemporary novel does not stretch the mind. The contemporary novel nowadays, has a tendency to more or less report on the social scene to people who would like to sit comfortably at home and read a report without any sense of responsibility, without any response whatsoever.
But science fiction demands response, and By God! we get it; we kill ourselves to get it!
Which brings us, of course, to the last point about good and bad science fiction. Since science fiction is mind-stretching and since its purpose is to really grab people, shake them, and make them think, it implies that the science fiction author must himself be capable of thought, must have had experience, must indeed have something to say in his book. In other words, science fiction, I think, is the supreme test of the career of the author. There is no other form, (no other form of art) that tests the artist as science fiction does—which is why I would like, in the Russian manner, to applaud my colleagues.
Algol, May 1972
In Memoriam: Alfred Bester (1913-1987)
Isaac Asimov
introduction by
Gregory S. Benford
Editor's Note: The Science Fiction Writers of America's annual Nebula Awards volume for 1987 included a memorial on Bester from Gregory S. Benford and Isaac Asimov. It's a fitting end to this collection.
Isaac Asimov, designated the eighth Grand Master of the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1986, here memorializes the ninth, Alfred Bester. Asimov is the indefatigable author of nearly four hundred books, including a clutch of classic science-fiction titles and a number of nonfiction guides to the sciences, the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, and so on. For most readers of these Nebula Award volumes, he genuinely requires no introduction.
Therefore, let me write briefly of Alfred Bester.
Bester's reputation today owes its enviable sheen to two witty, colorful, and pyrotechnic novels, The Demolished Man (1953) and The Stars My Destination (1956), as well as to a dozen or more indescribably dazzling and original pieces of short fiction, among them my own favorite, "Fondly Fahrenheit" (1954), which deservedly appeared in the anthology Science Fiction Hall of Fame, published in 1970 to showcase landmark stories that had appeared before the founding of SFWA (the Science Fiction Writers of America) and the inception of the Nebula Awards in 1965. "Fondly Fahrenheit" seems a pizzazzingly paced, far-future riff on Faulkner's "Dry September"—but it isn't. It's that, and an interplanetary psychological thriller about confused identities, the master-slave relationship, and lots more besides. Whatever the story is, its elements mesh in kaleidoscopic ways that propel and unsettle. "The thermometer in the power plant registered 100.9° murderously Fahrenheit. All reet! All reet!" No way to explain. You'll have to read this one for yourself.
My first encounter with Bester's work came with a reading of The Stars My Destination, a vivid, space-age recension of Victor Hugo's The Count of Monte Cristo and a kind of prose forerunner—if not the actual inspiration—of the psychedelic "through-the-stargate" sequence in the Kubrick/Clarke film 2001: A Space Odyssey. I have wanted to jaunte ever since, and I can never think of Bester without thinking of imaginative flash, intellectual nimbleness, and an inborn feel for character that always alchemized these first two gifts from mere gimmicks into powerful reflections of distinctive genius.
Two later novels, The Computer Connection (1974) and Golem100 (1980) were disappointing fallings-away from the apex of Bester's early achievement, and we must forgive Bester if he did in fact—according to Charles Platt in a recent reminiscence in the British magazine Interzone—come to view Golem100 as "beyond any doubt" his "best book." Writers always want to think their latest novel is their most nearly perfect, and, both proverbially and provably, they are often self-deluding judges of their own output.
So it apparently was with Bester, that outgoing gadfly with the omnivorous "magpie mind." His last years were reportedly not the happiest, but his knowledge that he had won the Grand Master Award may have afforded some solace. And, too, he had to have realized that his influence on the field has been not only far-reaching but revivifying. Indeed, his work seems to have had a strong impact on the new wave Samuel R. Delany avatar who wrote Nova (1968) as well as on the William Gibson computer demon who hard-copied Neuromancer (1984) into the annals of the Mirrorshades Mob.
Not long ago, in fact, K. W. Jeter, who has himself been touted as a cyberpunk on the basis of his novels Dr. Adder and The Glass Hammer, told an interviewer, "What's being labeled as cyberpunk is just the usual rediscovery of Alfred Bester that happens every two or three years in the SF field. Almost everything labeled as cyberpunk, just as with almost any supposedly new thing in SF, really resembles nothing so much as Alfred Bester's closet. Or his wastebasket."
Jeter here indulges in hyperbole, of course, but by no means gross or indefensible hyperbole—for the simple reason that Alfred Bester was an original. Unquestionably, he was the most energetic, vivid, and imitation-inspiring stylistic and structural pathfinder among the nine fine writers upon whom SFWA has so far bestowed its Grand Master Award. His innovations will necessarily continue to crop up in the work of new writers. Ironically, however, some of these new writers may have only the dimmest notion from whom—at several diluted removes—they are cribbing.
As Peter Nicholls observed in The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (1979) "[Alfred Bester] is one of the very few genre SF-writers to have bridged, unconsciously, the chasm between the old and the new wave, by becoming a hero figure for both; perhaps because in his images he conjures up, almost in one breath, both outer and inner space."
—Gregory Benford
Alfred Bester died on September 30, 1987, aged seventy-three. He did not receive an obituary in The New York Times.
I know that because I have reached the age where I read the obituary page carefully. I am a quasi-celebrity myself and therefore have accumulated, with the years, a number of friends who are worthy of obituaries and who have also reached the age where such sad bottom lines become increasingly likely. I
read the pages, wincing with apprehension, but I dare not miss the smallest notice.
Yet I did not know of Alfred Bester's death till I phoned Harlan Ellison on another subject entirely, and he told me of the event several days after the fact. "Another good guy gone," he said.
Alfie (I never heard him referred to by his friends in any other way) was an old-timer, of course. His first story, "The Broken Axiom," appeared only three months after my first story, and that's old-timish enough for anyone.
He was never what I would call prolific, but prolific just means a lot. It has nothing to say about quality, and as far as Alfie was concerned, the word was quality. He published such early classics as "Adam and No Eve" and "Fondly Fahrenheit." He published a fantasy novella, "Hell Is Forever." He worked with comic magazines and travel magazines; he wrote radio scripts and sat in an editor's chair.
Most of all, he wrote a few great novels. His best (and one that knocked me for a loop when it appeared—a loop which, I realized even at the time, had a strong component of envy in it) was The Demolished Man, which appeared in 1953, and which had the well-deserved honor of being the first novel to win a Hugo. It is, with scarcely any argument, I imagine, the best novel about a telepathic society ever written. It is the only one I could thoroughly believe. It seemed to me that if a telepathic society existed it would have to be as Alfie described it. The Stars My Destination published three years later was even more flamboyant and scarcely lagged in quality.
But The New York Times did not give him an obituary. He was mentioned only in the "ad department" at the bottom of the page for which people pay.
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