In
1962, Groff Conklin assembled and published 16 science fiction stories in an anthology that he called
Great Science Fiction by Scientists. Shown in the image to the right is the 1967 edition's freaky cover art. Here in this blog post and
the next one, I'm going to comment on this collection of stories and the "scientists" who wrote them. Sadly, not all of the assembled authors were scientists, but Conklin tried hard to beat the bushes and find science fiction stories tellers who might be called "almost-scientists".
1. I've previously mentioned the lead story, "
What If..." by
Isaac Asimov, which was first published in 1952. "What If..." seems like a precursor story to Asimov's time travel novel,
The End of Eternity. I love the idea of a technology that allows someone to view the future and even possibly
View alternative timelines or
Realities. (see also: "
Pre-Vision")
2. I've also previously commented on "The Tissue-Culture King" by Julian Huxley which was first published in 1926. Unlike Asimov, who wrote and published many science fiction stories between 1939 and 1952, Huxley is only credited with publishing this one story.
"The Tissue-Culture King" is a very strange story, but interesting to me because it included the idea of experimenting on humans so as to make possible
telepathy. According to
this page,
hypnosis had been included in written stories and some films from the mid-1800s to the 1920s. In his story, Huxley suggested that hypnotism could be used to put human brains into a state that would allow for telepathic linkages between large numbers of individuals.
"The Tissue-Culture King" also deals with a religion that includes weird beliefs such as honoring your god/king by culturing some of his cells. I have to wonder if Asimov was ever influenced by "The Tissue-Culture King". I know that Asimov praised the science fiction of H. G. Wells. In 1927, Huxley began working with Wells on "The Science of Life". Like Wells, Asimov would publish both fiction and non-fiction, promoting public understanding of science.
When Asimov began his famous
Foundation Saga, he included the idea of a "scientific religion" that could be used to control the "barbarian" people of the petty kingdoms at the rim of the galaxy during the time when the great Galactic Empire was crumbling.
Along with science-oriented religions, telepathy was another Sci Fi plot element that was "in the air" when Asimov started publishing his science fiction stories. Shown to the left is the cover art for Mars Breaks Through by the English inventor Archibald Low. Like Arthur Clarke (see #4, below), Low served for a time as president for the British Interplanetary Society. Mars Breaks Through concerns long-range telepathic contact between Martians and people on Earth. Like Wells and Asimov, Low also wrote about science and technology for an audience of general readers. One of Low's interests was the possibility of using brain surgery to improve human cognition.
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interior art for "The Brain", 1950
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3. The final story in
Great Science Fiction by Scientists is "
The Brain" (
1950) by "the father of cybernetics"
Norbert Wiener. In this story, a frontal lobotomy is used to put an end to the career of a criminal mastermind. You can read both of the fictional stories that Wiener is credited with writing in the
April 1964 issue of
Tech Engineering News along with other articles about his career as a mathematician who was interested in the brain.
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| interior art for "The Brain" |
I don't really find it easy to call either "The Brain" or "The Miracle of the Broom Closet" science fiction. When published in
Tech Engineering News, "The Brain" was presented as having been written by "W. Norbert" and it is not clear how it found its way into a magazine about engineering. Other articles in that issue described topics such as an early IBM punch-card computer and x-ray diffraction (which, in the early 1950s, was being used to reveal
the structure of DNA).
Also published in 1950 was The Human Use of Human Beings, which touched on some of the same issues in man-machine relationships that Asimov explored in his positronic robot stories. Wiener wrote about using machines to do factory work, leaving people free to do creative work. In his robot novels, Asimov depicted displaced human workers who resented robots because the machines put people out of work (see Caves of Steel).
4. The story that was written by
Arthur C. Clarke and was re-published in
Great Science Fiction by Scientists is "
Summertime on Icarus". It is rather hard for me to imagine how this story got published in
Vogue (1960), but I suppose after
Sputnik there was general interest in the "
space race". A version of the story from
BBC radio is available at the
Internet Archive.
"Great" science fiction. Most science fiction story tellers made very little use of robots in their tales about space exploration. In "Summertime on Icarus" our hero, Colin Sherrard, must replace a seismograph data transmitter on Icarus. Working on the dark side of the asteroid, Colin completed his mission by using an EVA pod, but one of its rockets malfunctions, preventing his planned return from the surface of Icarus to his spaceship. Soon poor Colin will be roasted alive when he is exposed to sunlight!
When he begins to get disoriented, Colin tries self-hypnosis, but staying in that altered state until he is rescued would have been too boring for the readers of
Vogue, so we get to follow his thoughts as Colin thinks about his family and the discovery of Icarus and the theory that it originated as part of a planet that long ago fell apart and fragmented into asteroids (see
5th planet).
This might be the time to ask 1) who was Groff Conklin and 2) what did he mean by "scientist" and 3) how did he select stories such as "Summertime on Icarus" for his collection of "great" stories? In 1962, Conklin was well known for having published multiple anthologies. In 1948, Clarke's story "Loophole" was included in A Treasury of Science Fiction. Clarke's "The Fires Within" was included in Conklin's 1950 anthology The Science Fiction Galaxy.
Conklin & Clarke 💕. In 1951, another story by Clarke, "A Walk in the Dark", was included in
Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. Like "Summertime on Icarus", "A Walk in the Dark" (1950) features a lone spaceman subjected to danger by equipment failure. Yawn.
Omnibus of Science Fiction (1952) held Clarke's story "History Lesson" which describes the arrival of aliens from Venus on Earth after humans have become extinct. "History Lesson" was first published in 1949 and it features Clarke constructing his story by assuming that there could be intelligent life on Venus.
The 1960 anthology 13 Great Stories of Science Fiction included "Silence, Please!" by Clarke. "Silence, Please!" was first published in 1950, but it featured the appearance of a cheap electronic calculator in 1960. However, a more impressive plot element is the development of a mathematics of "social psychology" which can predict problems arising from new technologies. The only application of the mathematics of social psychology appearing in the story is a prediction of disaster arriving from the sale of portable electronic noise canceling devices. These are not like noise canceling headphones, instead they are magical devices that can eliminate all sound from a location such as an opera hall. "Silence, Please!" was written like a kind of joke story and was not published under Clarke's real name. I suppose Asimov was amused when he read "Silence, Please!" and Asimov later included it in his own anthology, Mad Scientists.
Also published in 1962 was
Worlds of When which includes Clarke's story "Death and the Senator", originally published in 1961. Coming right at the start of the race to the Moon, this story deals with a politician who objects to funding research in space.
It is clear that Conklin frequently included Clarke's short stories in anthologies, but was Clarke ever really a scientist? Clarke studied math and physics in college, but it is not clear that he ever really worked as a scientist, unless he did so secretly during World War II. Clarke was certainly a booster of -and advocate for- manned space exploration and I've seen it claimed that his writings helped sway some politicians towards support for NASA.
5. James V. McConnell earned a B.A. degree in 1947. In the March 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, there was a letter from McConnell describing himself as a psychologist. However, in commenting on Campbell's recent article about the atomic bomb, McConnell also stated "I have many friends at Los Alamos".
After college, McConnell apparently went to work as a writer for radio and television and then got interested in publishing science fiction. He stated flatly "Rhine is wrong" and "there is nothing even close to telepathy" in an autobiographical sketch that was published by McConnell in the April 1955 issue of Imagination. His story "Learning Theory" (1957) is about aliens who first perform psychological experiments on human test subjects and then decide that the human species should be exterminated.
McConnell called himself a Texan and it would be interesting to know just what he learned about biology and chemistry before graduating from Louisiana State University in 1947. He claimed that by the time he got his M.A. from the University of Texas in 1954 he had attended "
seven different universities".
According to the ISFDB, McConnell's science fiction stories were all published between 1953 and 1957. However, in 1959, McConnell created his own venue for science fiction: the Worm Runner's Digest where he first published his strange laboratory results about memory transfer by cannibalism. You can read his presentation called "RNA and Memory" from an April 1964 meeting in Kansas (Role of Macromolecules in Complex Behavior). Apparently, McConnell's research on learning in worms was funded in part by the Atomic Energy Commission. While admitting his ignorance about chemistry, McConnell took quite seriously the idea that you could train a rat, extract RNA from its brain and then transfer memories to another rat by injecting (intraperitoneal injection) that RNA.
RNA Dreams. The idea of using RNA to transfer memories from one brain to another was greeted with extreme skepticism by biologists, but McConnell's interest in RNA did not spring full grown from his own Sci Fi imagination. McConnell's experiments with RNA were preceded by studies involving the feeding of RNA to human test subjects.
Donald Ewen Cameron was a medical doctor with a long-standing interest in memory. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953) and then the Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959) and he became involved in CIA-funded research efforts often called MK-ultra. Starting in about 1956, Cameron and his collaborators carried out experiments that involved feeding or injecting RNA into patients with memory problems (for example, see: "EFFECTS OF RIBONUCLEIC ACID ON MEMORY DEFECT IN THE AGED").
It is thought that many records of secret government-funded biology research projects were destroyed, but some of the horrific experiments that were performed on unwitting patients by
Cameron starting in 1957 did eventually came to light.
We can speculate that the CIA would have been thrilled to have the means to control human memories and behavior through something as simple as injecting RNA into a person. I would not be surprised if money was channeled to McConnell through the Atomic Energy Commission and led to his students going into institutions where they injected radioactive RNA into unsuspecting patients. Later, when these terminally ill patients died, their brains could be studied to see if the radioactive RNA was taken up into their brains.
It is impossible for me to read McConnell's 1957 story "Learning Theory" without wondering if he was aware of secret psychological experiments on human test subjects. The story is written from the perspective of a psychology teacher (a full professor) who is abducted by aliens and subjected to experiments to test his cognitive abilities and see if human behavior is similar to what has been seen previously by the aliens in other "animal colonies".
However, the teacher does not actually get to meet the aliens and he soon begins to wonder if one of his human colleagues is subjecting him to "some fantastic human-in-isolation experiment". Indeed, this was one of the types of experiments that people were subjected to by Cameron. In the end, the human test subject in "Learning Theory" tries to escape from the alien experiments by behaving in unpredictable ways. This prompts the Dalek alien experimenter to propose that all humans should be exterminated.
6. The story by
Leo Szilard called "Grand Central Terminal" was also included in
Laughing Space, an anthology by Asimov. Beyond the lame toilet humor, I think "Grand Central Terminal" does have a serious side to it. The story takes place after a nuclear war and the destruction of all life on Earth. An alien visiting Earth suggests that the problem leading to the extinction of humans was that they used money and their capitalistic ways led inevitably to war and the extinction of the human species.
7. "John Taine" was a pseudonym for the mathematician Eric Bell. Bell was never a scientist and it shows in his story "The Ultimate Catalyst" (1939). The titular catalyst is gold, which in the story is used by "the world's greatest biochemist" to catalyze the rapid exchange of magnesium for the iron atoms that are normally found in hemoglobin.
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iron (Fe) binds to O2 in the heme of hemoglobin
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Fantasy Chemistry. Readers of "The Ultimate Catalyst" are supposed to believe that a person who has their hemoglobin chemically altered in this way will then quickly be transformed from an animal into a plant-like lump of rooted and immobile tissue.
"The Ultimate Catalyst" is set in the Amazon rain-forest. In order to remove from Earth its last remaining murderous dictator, a noble biochemist sacrifices his own life, but mercifully his lab assistant and daughter (Consuelo) escapes. The biochemist must consume the "ultimate catalyst" (hidden inside a delectable fruit) in order the get the wary dictator to consume it. Thus, the biochemist is converted into a living lump of plant-like tissue, retaining memories of his animal existence. Before fleeing from the rain-forest, Consuelo sets fire to her father and the dictator, saving them from existing as immobile plants while still being able to remember their prior human existence.
As noted in the biographical information shown in the image above, Bell had been publishing novels since 1924. After Nazi Germany began World War II, Bell published a guest editorial in the March 1939 issue of Startling Stories in which he described his belief that dictators could be combated by scientists and populations of non-scientists who had an appreciation for science. Bell thought that science fiction could be used to help make people understand science and trust scientists. "The Ultimate Catalyst" was published a few months latter in Thrilling Wonder Stories.
It is an amusing exercise to contemplate the possible thoughts of Isaac Asimov when he read "The Ultimate Catalyst" in 1939. Asimov was interested in biology and was a chemistry student and would eventually teach biochemistry at Boston University. In his guest editorial for
Startling Stories, Bell suggested that even the wildest science fiction story could contribute towards public appreciation for science. I suspect that Asimov struggled to see the science education benefits of a wildly absurd story like "The Ultimate Catalyst". However, Asimov did go on to develop his own theory that by reading science fiction stories, people could become accustomed to thinking about changes in society caused by new technologies.
In his 1927 novel
Quayle's Invention, Bell had a character ask: "
Are the chemists to blame for the use that politicians make of science?" That is the kind of question that was on Leo Szilard's mind when he wrote "
My Trial as a War Criminal". I suppose for some people such as
Donald Cameron (see above), such thoughts never cross their minds as they busily pursue their "scientific" objectives. This is why all biomedical research now must be reviewed by an oversight committee that evaluates the ethics of the research. Of course, good capitalists such as those at
Purdue Pharma are still able to use the fruits of science to make billion$, regardless of the human cost.
8. "The Gold-Makers" by
J. B. S. Haldane. According to the
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Haldane left behind an unfinished science fiction story when he died that was published as
The Man with Two Memories in 1976. However,
The Man with Two Memories seems quite rare and I've never read it. 😞
For "The Gold-Makers", the story is told from the perspective of a physical chemist who can recognize at a glance any of the "forty-two simultaneous differential equations that would enable one to predict the behavior of carbon". You can tell this is a science fiction story because the chemist resents the fact that nobody can smoke while riding the Paris Metro. However, the chemist is drawn into the "biggest thing since the steam engine", which has already cost the life of a famous French mathematician who figured out the wave equations for gold atoms.
Since readers of "The Gold-Makers" have read the title of the story, it comes of little surprise that the wave equations for gold atoms are not simply an esoteric matter that can only excite chemists. Not only did the French chemist solve the gold equations, but he also was able to predict the chemical structure of a particular organic molecule that has a high affinity for gold atoms. With the help of an organic chemist who synthesizes the gold-binding molecule, soon it becomes possible to purify gold from sea water.
In 1927, Haber published a journal article about the possibility of obtaining gold from sea water, but I have no idea if that was inspiration for Haldane. I also have no idea if Asimov ever read "The Gold-Makers", but Asimov's psychohistory as a way to mathematically predict the future seems as far out as predicting a gold-binding molecule's structure from the wave equations for gold.
In "The Gold-Makers", a shortage of gold is blamed for the Great Depression, and a plan is hatched to solve that problem by obtaining gold from the sea. Part of the plan is to also use the profits from gold purification to better pay scientists. However, some gold miners figure out that a new source of gold has begun upsetting the gold market and they try to kill everyone with knowledge of how to get gold from sea water.
Related Reading: Conklin's 1951 anthology Possible Worlds of Science Fiction.
Next: comments on the remaining 8 stories in Great Science Fiction by Scientists.
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