Long-Range Telepathy

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Last year, I read the 1939 science fiction story "Cosmic Engineers" by Clifford D. Simak which was published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine. In that story, Simak imagined that humans were somehow related to "ancient astronauts" from Pluto who evolved billions of years before we humans. The remnants of the folks from Pluto, the Cosmic Engineers, are telepathic robots who, now in need of our help, telepathically communicate with Earthlings from the far edge of the universe.

Under the "guidance" of editor John Campbell, Astounding was full of stories about telepathy including Slan, by A. E. van Vogt (1940).

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While being mentored by Campbell, Isaac Asimov could not resist the temptation to make his own telepathic robots, humans and aliens for inclusion in some of his science fiction stories. In 1952 he published "The Deep" which featured telepathic communication over interstellar distances.

I recently commented on a few short science fiction stories by John D. MacDonald who dabbled in Sci Fi for a few years then became famous for his Travis McGee series. 

For my Exode Saga, I've had fun imagining that in a previous Reality, the analogue of MacDonald (Joanna) was able to make use of telepathy for obtaining Sci Fi story ideas.

interior art for "Wine of the Dreamers"

Here, in this blog post, I'm going to comment on MacDonald's Sci Fi novel Wine of the Dreamers as originally published in the May 1950 issue of Startling Stories. The story is built around telepathic contact between humans on Earth and "aliens" who reside on a distant planet. We have to wonder: why do these "aliens" just happen to have a special interest in we Earthlings? The answer provided by MacDonald is the same answer that was given by Simak in "Cosmic Engineers".

 In reviewing "Wine of the Dreamers" for Galaxy Science Fiction in 1951, Edward Conklin made the explicit point that the basic plot and many of the story ideas in "Wine of the Dreamers" were not original to MacDonald. I have no problem with writers borrowing story ideas from each-other, particularly when an old story idea is taken in a new direction or simply decorated with better writing. 

using sweet cupcakes to sell
science fiction magazines

Question #1. So, how does "Wine of the Dreamers" hold up as a science fiction story?

 

A Second Question

When previously reading some of MacDonald's short Sci Fi stories, I was puzzled by his approach to including female characters in the stories. In "The Mechanical Answer", a gigantic government project tries to solve the problem of making an artificial intelligence with a human-like mind. All of the assembled experts are stumped by the problem. MacDonald does not state exactly when the story takes place, but I'll imagine that the events of the story take place in the 1960s and we know that male engineers dominated NASA during the race to land "a man" on the Moon. I'll not complain that it is a group of men who are working to solve the artificial intelligence problem. 

 

selling books

I'll even give credit to MacDonald for including a female character (Jane) in "The Mechanical Answer" who is mostly off-stage during the story, but it is her knowledge of the human brain that leads to success in the all-male government project aimed at building a Thinking Machine™. 

 

Sadly, while on stage in "The Mechanical Answer", Jane is only shown getting tears on her pretty face because her man is going away to work on the super-secret project. Did MacDonald provide readers with more interesting female characters in the novel-length "Wine of the Dreamers"?

interior art for "Wine of the Dreamers"

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Editor Samuel Merwin ran "Wine of the Dreamers" as the lead story of the May 1950 issue of Startling Stories and took pains to provide interior art depicting scantily clad women right at the start of the story. MacDonald quickly introduces readers to the long-legged Sharan Inly, travel companion of Dr. Bard Lane. They are driving across a parched desert with an unconscious man (Project physicist Bill Kornal) in the back seat of the car, some time in the future after the failed first rocket trip to Mars. On the car radio are news stories about horrible events such as mass-shootings and celebrity suicides.

 

The X-Factor Files

Sharan is Dr. Inly, who is in charge of psycho-adjustment for The Project. The dialog between Bard and Sharan is soon bubbling with words like "Freud", "dementia praecox", and "psycho-neurotic". 

 

"it must be aliens"

For some inexplicable reason, the previously stable Bill suddenly snapped and sabotaged The Project. It all feels like the start of an episode of The X-Files, particularly when Bard says, "... it was as though something quite alien took over his mind." Struggling to explain the mystery of how people such as Bill can so suddenly snap, Brad adds, "... floating around somewhere is an X factor".

Hypnotic cupcakes in Hollywood

As described previously, in MacDonald's 1948 short story "Cosmetics", the amazing power of hypnosis was the core pillar of the fictional science that allows people to transform their appearance on a whim. For "Wine of the Dreamers", the super important Project relies on hypnosis to make sure that the Project personnel can be trusted.

For a time in the previous millennium, many author's and film makers were deeply in love with hypnosis. For example, in 1947 there was Fear in the Night in which deployed the fantastic power of fictional hypnosis wielded by an Evil™ hypnotist against poor DeForest Kelley. 

 

another failure

The film critic for the New York Times called Fear in the Night ridiculous, but I think the common saying "there's a sucker born every minute" is what wins the day when it comes to belief in the power of hypnosis and authors such as MacDonald deploying fantasy hypnosis as a plot element.

Seven pages into the story, MacDonald finally tells readers that The Project is "Project Tempo", a government-funded attempt to create a practical method for interstellar space travel based on "folding space" (hand-wave). Actually, MacDonald provides readers with pages of painful hand-waving that "explains" the fictional science of his warp drive.

 

Bill Kornal "snapped" and did serious damage to critical equipment for Project Tempo, but this was not an isolated incident. Dr. Lane provides an info dump and tells us that "the history of space travel has been a long record of failure" with many cases of sabotage.

cover by Carolus Thole

When questioned, Kornal explains "his" act of "sabotage" by saying that something briefly took over control of his body and destroyed the delicate Project equipment. The exact same thing had previously happened to another person who had been working on a past failed space flight to Mars. Houston, we have a Mystery™.

World of Dreamers

Ten pages into the story, readers finally meet one of the "aliens" (Raul) who have been sabotaging the attempts of Earthlings to develop space travel. As a child, Raul realizes that he is some kind of mutant, different from the other children. He quickly learns that everyone around him is living a lie, trapped in a dying society where nobody knows the truth about their "dreams" which are a form of technology-assisted telepathy which can be used to take control of the minds of people on the distant planets 1, 2 (Earth) and 3. 

 

cover art by Herbert Bruck

Raul slowly learns that all the people of worlds 1, 2 and 3 are "colonists" who came from the ancient world of the "Watchers". Raul's people, the "Watchers" were part of a great Plan™ by which they were to monitor worlds 1, 2 and 3 until the time when they could be linked and united in harmony. Until then, the "Law™" of the Watchers is that they must prevent the people of colony worlds 1, 2 and 3 from traveling through space.

Dr. Lane then becomes the target of another "mind take-over" attempt on Earth, this one carried out by the well-intentioned Raul who wants to help The Project. At first, the good Dr. Inly is confident that Lane, under stress from the Project, "simply" imagined his experience of an "alien" inside his mind. Eventually, Dr. Inly has her own telepathic contact with Raul. Rather than believe Raul's "crazy story" about interstellar telepathy, she invents her own delusion: that evil Russian hypnotists are trying to discredit she and Lane and foil The Project.

Raul's sister

cover by Herbert Bruck

Using her telepathic powers, Raul's sister, Leesa destroys the interstellar spaceship being built by The Project. Leesa also rats out her brother to their fellow Watchers and he is soon going to be put to death for the heresy of helping Earthlings. Tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion...

But "seriously"... having written our heroes into a corner, suddenly MacDonald makes the tide turn. Leesa falls in love with Dr. Lane💗. Similarly, Raul is smitten by Sharan and he decides that he must travel across interstellar space to find Dr. Inly💕. The enforcer of the "Law™" among the Watchers who had ordered Raul's execution now has a sudden change of heart and helps Raul and Leesa jump in a 10,000 year-old spaceship and head for Earth. The "alien" spaceship arrives on Earth and everyone lives happily ever after.

the shocking plot twist

cover art by Edward Valigursky

 Contrived and Silly

MacDonald tries to have readers believe that humans evolved on a distant planet and first arrived on Earth (and two other colony worlds) 10 to 50 thousand years ago. Folks on the original planet of the humans devised a Plan™ for Watching the 3 colony worlds and eventually bringing them together. Then they "forgot" the Plan™. Only through the heroic efforts of Raul is the Plan™ rediscovered and Earth saved from the "Watchers" who delight in causing havoc on Earth, believing their telepathic contacts with Earthlings to only be "dreams".

If it is broken, don't fix it

How do the "Watchers" manage to forget their Plan™? The "Watchers" all live and work in a tall office building with escalators between the floors of the building. MacDonald tells readers that at some point in the far past, one of the escalators broke. 

 

1953 book cover

The "Watchers" were too lazy to walk up the steps of the broken escalator which now separated them from the school on the upper floors where young "Watchers" could learn to read and could learn the history of the Plan™. 

 

The entire plot of "Wine of the Dreamers" is silly and contrived and impossible for me to "buy into". Worse, MacDonald's depiction of the "Watchers" in "Wine of the Dreamers" is sickening. Ten hours each day, "Watchers" such as Leesa use their telepathic powers to rape helpless women and commit other ghastly crimes on Earth 🤯. For the "Watchers" it is all great fun. The rest of the day, while not "dreaming", the "Watchers" get together with their friends and brag to each other about the horrific things they did during their last "dream". 

 

 Readers of "Wine of the Dreamers" must ask themselves, what kind of person imagines such a fictional society, let alone writes it into their novel? My advice: if you want to sell horror stories, then market them as horror stories, not science fiction.

1952

A review of "Wine of the Dreamers" by Damon Knight correctly predicted that since MacDonald had begun selling stories in more profitable genres, it was unlikely that he would continue writing science fiction. Knight felt it was problematical that in "Wine of the Dreamers" MacDonald had depicted only 900 "Watchers". I don't agree. The population of the inbred "Watchers" had been in decline for thousands of years. We can infer that because of the declining population of the "Watchers", civilization on Earth has finally begun to rise towards the stars. 

 

Knight was apparently quite comfortable with the silly and unexplained "Raul is a mutant" premise that is at the heart of "Wine of the Dreamers". Raul and his sister look nothing like the rest of the "Dreamers".

Having published "Wine of the Dreamers" in magazine format in 1950, Merwin later reviewed the book format story for Amazing Stories, in the January 1952 issue. Reading his review, it is evident that Merwin was quite enamored of "Wine of the Dreamers". He calls MacDonald, "... one of the country's ablest all-around young writers".

Clarity of the Concept

Merwin praised "Wine of the Dreamers" and MacDonald for the "clarity of the concept" behind the story. However, the story never explains how the illiterate "Watchers" on a planet light years away can take control of the minds of Earthlings. 

 

1953

Planet 3 

There were three worlds colonized by the "Watchers". Planet #1 has a barbaric civilization at about the level of Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago. Planet #2 is Earth. Planet three is a world where the people have telepathic powers and can defend themselves against the "Watchers". Telepathy and technology-assisted telepathy are facts within this imaginary fictional universe. But why are the "Watchers" and the folks on Planet #3 blessed with telepathic powers while the people on planets 1 and 2 are not? Turn off your brain. Apparently we are expected to not ask such questions... by doing so, you will only cloud the great "clarity" of the story.

 

Why did MacDonald write page-long descriptions of the fictional physics behind his imagined space drive and say nothing about the physical basis of telepathy? I have to suspect that for MacDonald his imagined telepathy was magical fantasy, not something to be explained by science. 

1957

In a short review of "Wine of the Dreamers" published in the April 1952 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, Peter Miller praised the story for its "likable characters". Leesa displays disgusting cruelty through most of the story as do all of the other "Watchers" except for the mutant Raul. What about Dr. Inly? Towards the end of the story, she is almost redeemed by finally accepting that she has been in telepathic contact with Raul, but I'd be hard pressed to put her (or anyone else in this story) on a list of likable characters. Maybe Miller liked the way that Sharan drinks a glass of beer by holding the glass in two hands "like a child". 

 

Maybe the story was improved and modified before being published in book format. Starting in 1953 the story was published as Planet of the Dreamers. I only read the Startling Stories version.

1954

MacDonald expended a lot of energy waving his hands to "explain" how Raul was able to travel through space at a rate faster than light. At the same time, the telepathic signals instantaneously pass from the World of the Dreamers to Earth, but this miracle does not even receive comment from MacDonald. Thus, "Wine of the Dreamers" is a strange mix of fantasy and science fiction in which both of the two main characters (Raul and Bard) work for decades with single-minded determination towards their goals until suddenly they don't. They both reach a point where they give up on their life's work and they have to be rescued by their female companion (Leesa or Sharan). Ho, hum.

Next: the short story format

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