Reading Disease

Robert Heinlein's bu$ine$$  rules

About a month ago I mentioned "the reading disease" in a blog post that was about how writing can be a disease. Continuing that theme, today I was again reminded of Heinlein's rules for writing and I also saw the following tweet:

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Do The Math
I suppose you might diagnose me as having a "reading disease", but the evidence might be hard to come by. These days I seldom buy new books. One reason for this is that I already own plenty of great books that I like to read. Another reason is that I have very little interest in most books. I think that Sturgeon's Law needs an update for the current millennium: I'd say that after taking into account inflation,  99% of "science fiction" is crap.

Some Sci Fi can put me to sleep.

First of all, note that I put "science fiction" in quotes. Most of what gets called science fiction (particularly in Hollywood) does not qualify to be included in the genre according to my rather narrow definition. So, I might have a reading disease, but over the years I have become much more selective about what I read.

And as I emphasized in my recent blog post about "writing as a disease", I'm particularly interested in cases where a reading disease progresses to a writing disease. My two favorite science fiction story writers, Isaac Asimov and Jack Vance each produced a huge amount of published writing.

In the Spirit of Festivus

in the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Milton Rosenblatt

For each of these great authors, I find some of their writings to be unreadable. As they say, everyone should have an editor.

In the case of Vance, I just don't even try to read some of his books. A few of these sit on a self beside me right now, but I know I will never open them again. I tried once and fled. I have not been able to stop myself from mentally exploring the hypothesis that sometimes Vance became bored with a story and dropped it. Later, someone, possibly his wife, finished it up and sent it off to the presses. Ew.

Whoa, don't step in that crap!

In the case of Asimov, some of his novels are among my favorites, but when I re-read them, I just skim through the boring parts. Really, someone should do the world a service an re-issue most of his work in a condensed format.

The practice of paying pulp science fiction writers by the word did a whole lot of damage. There should have been special bonuses paid for elegantly written short stories without all the lard.

Live and Let Die

When I was in the first phase of my personal golden age of science fiction and reading every story I could find, I soon started to rein-in my reading disease. This was a natural reaction to the crappy stories I had read. I knew that I could not continue being a science fiction fan unless I learned how to protect myself from all of the horrible stories that got marketed as "science fiction".

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Walter Popp

About the time that I had this epiphany, 'Live and Let Die' was filling the airways. I went through all of my accumulated science fiction books and ranked them (A, B, C...). The real stinkers I simply threw away. I vowed that I would never buy another "stinker". From that point on, I'd only buy a book after carefully reading a good chunk of it. I spent a lot of time reading books in book stores and not buying them.

Funny Story
Asimov told the story of once being asked by Robert Heinlein how many revisions an Asimov story went through before being submitted for publication. After hearing the answer, Heinlein asked a follow-up question: "You type it twice? Why don't you type it correctly the first time?"

She put it on the market. Original
 cover art by Isaac Paul Rader.

Of course, before computerized word processors became available to authors, it was tempting to only type a story once and then move on. I had to type my senior thesis and believe me, with the painful way I type, there was no way I was going to type out a second draft. White-out was my savior. Asimov also described another factor that helped him learn to limit the amount of story revising: when he started writing his science fiction stories, typing paper was so expensive that he would make the most narrow page margins possible, saving on paper but infuriating editors. There was great motivation to get it right the first time.

Asimov eventually had a good paying day job, but Vance needed to turn out large volumes of story material to support his family, so he wrote at "pulp speed". I don't fault anyone for writing in torrents, but I'm horrified to hear the words "everything I write gets published" coming from an author. I despise the fact that once an author becomes popular and well-known then book publishers know that they can sell any crap that has that author's name on it.

Pulp Speed

I'll read it! I'll read it!
original cover art by Milton Rosenblatt

I have loads of fun reading old stories from the pulp science fiction magazines that helped create the science fiction genre. Lucky for us, many of the old stories are no longer behind copyright walls and we can access them via the internet (example). And of course, Sturgeon was correct: the vast majority of those old stories were really bad and it is no wonder that they were never included in the many anthologies that were put together as a way to share the better stories with a new generation of readers.

Still, I'm not sure I've ever seen a science fiction story that I completely despise. Particularly if someone had fun writing the story or if there is at least one person who enjoyed reading it. Some stories that did entertain me when I was 12 years old are painful to read now. No matter how bad the story, somewhere there is somebody in the throws of their reading disease, someone who is ready and willing to read it.

Next: in anticipation of the X-Files 2016 miniseries.

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The Man Who Invented Eternity

David Mattingly
cover art - 1981

Isaac Asimov was the man who invented Eternity. In this blog post, I want to explore the nature of science fiction and use Asimov's novel, The End of Eternity, as a jumping off point for my comments.

During his career, Asimov promoted the idea that science fiction plays a special and important role in our culture that goes far beyond entertainment. Asimov wrote, "Science fiction is the one branch of literature that accepts the fact of change, the inevitability of change." - from a 1981 editorial by Isaac Asimov called "The Influence of Science Fiction"

Asimov enthroned by Rowena Morrill

Asimov stressed the importance of science fiction stories as a source of healthy exercise for the imagination, as a playful learning tool that can shape the human mind and allow people to cope successfully with change. He also suggested that  "Science fiction is at its best if the events described could not be played out at all except in in a social or physical background significantly different than our own." I understand what Asimov was trying to say, but I've spent more than decade trying to prove him wrong about this last point.

In that 1981 editorial, Asimov listed examples of people who had grown up reading science fiction stories and who were therefore ready, as adults, to engineer and usher in important technological and cultural changes. One of the interesting cultural changes that took place during my lifetime was a startling new willingness of people to think about the possibility of alien creatures that might visit Earth. In my science fiction stories, I particularly like to contemplate the Fermi Paradox and the mystery of why we have no evidence for the existence of alien beings.

Time Machine by Dave Globerson

The "Eternity" of my title (The Man Who Invented Eternity) is the Eternity that Asimov invented in 1953: his imagined time travel device. Asimov's Eternity is not just a machine that you can sit inside of and ride into the past or future. Asimov's Eternity is a place, a human-created space-time bubble where the Eternals exist outside of the normal flow of Time. From their base of operations in Eternity, the Eternals (like Andrew Harlan) can reach out into Time and change the course of human history.

Mushroom cloud

In The End of Eternity, Asimov created a "what if?" thought experiment, a playground for the imagination where it is possible to explore what might happen to Humanity if we had the power to correct and prevent all of our mistakes, particularly all of our "technological disasters".

In the year when Asimov invented Eternity, the world was confronting the newly-realized human power to explode thermonuclear bombs. Asimov wrote a mushroom cloud into his story. The plot of The End of Eternity centers on the idea that if humans used time travel to prevent the development of nuclear weapons then Humanity would survive for 10,000,000 years but then die out.

Mental Time Travel

Example of play: The Dead Widowers.

Asimov thought that science fiction is good for us. What good is such a story as The End of Eternity? To answer that, I want to shift gears and briefly move this discussion over into the world of scientific research.

In an article called "The power of possibility: causal learning, counterfactual reasoning, and pretend play", it was suggested that human evolution provided us with a long juvenile period during which we can engage in exploratory play. During that play, children can experiment with causal models of reality. Later, as adults, we can exploit what we learned through play. In fact, many of us never stop playing with ideas and models and we constantly engage in "mental time travel", imaginary projections of future behavioral possibilities and outcomes.

Amžinybės pabaiga

I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that our well-developed capacity to engage in play has become a central element in the human survival strategy. However, curiosity can kill the cat and primates playing with fire can ultimately give us the power to destroy ourselves.

In The End of Eternity, nuclear war is depicted as the technological end point that Eternals strive to avoid at all cost. Of course, there are many other ways that tool using primates can cause havoc. Asimov also discusses "dreamies" and matter duplication as technologies that never result in favorable outcomes.


Play and Causal Thinking
Asimov started out as an obsessed reader of science fiction stories and that obsession turned into a compulsion to write and publish his own stories. Because of his need to write, Asimov became one of the world's most prolific authors, writing both science fiction and other types of fiction as well as millions upon millions of additional words of nonfiction. He even wrote obsessively to himself in his diary and about himself in his autobiographies. Sadly, he died just before he could have started writing webpages. Imagine what Asimov's blog would be like, were he still with us.

Cover art for the edition of
The End of Eternity that I currently own.

Asimov made a living by selling the products of his fertile imagination to his fans. It was easy for both meddling editors and book reviewers to piss off Asimov. We live in a society where stupid and clueless book reviewers can confuse and distract book readers and cost an author large amounts of money, not to mention their peace of mind. Asimov wrote, "I have never made any secret of the fact that I dislike the concept of reviews and the profession of reviewing".

Asimov kindly provided a list of requirements that must be met for a book reviewer to be competent. Given his strong emotional reaction against clueless reviewers, it might actually be for the best that Asimov did not live into the age of the internet where it is now possible for every Tom, Dick and Harry to put book reviews out on the internet. At least in Asimov's era, influential book reviews were likely to be written by paid professionals who had a chance of acting like a professional when they wrote and published a book review. Still, even in the previous millennium, plenty of opportunities existed for book reviewers to publish bumbling reviews of Asimov's books and trigger the emotional pain that he always felt when receiving a "bad review".

"novel of the future"?

Similarly, a meddling book editor can enrage an author just by changing one word of a story .... or rejecting a story because of the editor's own irrational prejudices, or adding a silly illustration ... or ..... well, there are probably an endless number of ways. However, Asimov gladly admitted that there were times when editors improved his stories with small alterations. For example, an editor changed the title of his first Black Widowers mystery story by the addition of one word, a change that pleased Asimov. When Cele Goldsmith rewrote the ending of Asimov's story called "What Is This Thing Called Love?", Asimov was happy with her contribution to the spirit of the story.

I discovered Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity, by way of the 1970s paperback edition that sports a cover illustration by Paul Lehr. I like to think of the (tiny) couple towards the bottom of Paul's depiction as being the time travelers Noÿs and Andrew. The contrast between the floating obelisks and the ancient ruins is a good fit for the story. I've previously blogged (repeatedly) about The End of Eternity and my belief that it is something of a SciFi masterpiece. Below, I allow myself to be diverted into a nonreview of the The End of Eternity that was provoked by a published review of the story.

Novel of the Future?

by Franco Castelluccio

Is The End of Eternity a "novel of the future" as was proclaimed on the cover? Wendy Lesser seemed to think so when she wrote her review of the novel. It must be a homework assignment at some college: students forced to analyze how closely Asimov "predicted" the future in one of his science fiction stories. The idea that a fan of science fiction would expect a science fiction author to predict the future is bizarre.

Wendy states in her review that when she was in her teens she was an obsessed science fiction fan. Maybe her obsession ended when some college professor made her write a term paper analyzing how closely a science fiction writer like Asimov "predicted" the course of the future in a science fiction story.

Crick

Wendy found it remarkable that Asimov, writing in 1950s, could have imagined a small electronic device that could hold an audio recording of 60,000,000 spoken words. However, as a trained chemist, Asimov knew just how tiny molecules are and the "double helix" model of "recording" information at the molecular level (as our DNA does) was big news in the scientific community in 1953, the year when Asimov started writing his time travel story. Need we be surprised that Asimov provided an Observer like Andrew Harlan with a handy-dandy "molecular recording device"? No.

And yet, Wendy begins her review of The End of Eternity by insisting that the idea that "an entire bookshelf of bound volumes can be stored in a gadget the size of a fingertip" was not "even a mote in a scientist’s eye". Of course, Asimov had long been writing about robots with positronic brains. Asimov knew that since biological evolution had discovered ways to store huge amounts of information in a human brain then some day it would become possible to make an artificial brain with vast amounts of information stored in a small space.

Schrödinger

Rosalind Franklin

As a scientist, Asimov was immersed in the scientific milieu of his age and it was widely known that since miniature information storage was already used inside living organisms then it was reasonable to extrapolate, theoretically, to future man-made computing machines that would also use very small memory storage devices.

In 1944 the scientific evidence was accumulating that DNA was the "genetic molecule". At that time, Erwin Schrödinger explained theoretically how patterns of covalent bonds in large molecules can store information. People like Rosalind Franklin were stimulated by that theoretical analysis to do biology experiments and discover the detailed structure of the genetic storage molecule, DNA. Other theoreticians like Francis Crick took the hard-won experimental data and made the double helix model of DNA.

Turing

Alan Turing, who worked with the first clumsy memory devices of the early computing age, none-the-less expected (in 1950) that by the start of the new millennium advances in computing would make it possible for people to build machines with human-like abilities such as using human languages. 

Feynman

Writing in 1959, Richard Feynmen suggested that, by the year 2000, great advances would be made in making tiny devices, and the only puzzle would then be why it had taken computer engineers so long to begin working on the task of miniaturizing their machines. Of course scientists and engineers were not slackers, they "simply" had to invent and build a new industry for creating nanoscale computing circuits.

Should we be surprised that Asimov depicted Andrew Harlan using a molecular recorder from the year 5500? Wendy claimed that, "Asimov thought all this would take many centuries". So, simultaneously it is a miracle that Asimov could imagine a "molecular recorder" and he was also a bozo for "predicting" that such devices would require centuries of R and D rather than decades? No, no, no, And no. In The End of Eternity, Asimov never predicted when any technological advance would occur. It is absurd and abominable for anyone to even suggest such a thing, let alone make it the kick-off point for their review of Asimov's book.

The Pace of Technological Advance

In The End of Eternity Asimov explored the idea that Eternity is simultaneously 1) a place outside of Time, 2) a time travel device, and 3) a kind of cultural stasis device.

Wendy apparently misunderstood the key implications of the idea that the Eternals, who live within the Eternity time travel device, do not travel through time to consult with their future selves. Using time travel to meet yourself is explicitly described by Asimov as being taboo among the Eternals.

Eternity is some type of space-time bubble where the Eternals reside in "sections" that are constructed living spaces that each connect to a particular century. When working as a time travel Technician, Andrew must travel to the correct section of Eternity and then cross over into the "nearby" desired part of Time in order to apply his Technician's Touch and alter the course of history.

Within The End of Eternity, an Eternal who is stationed and living in the section for the 575th century is living his life in parallel with other Eternals who are stationed in the 3000th century. Wendy is confused by this and she thinks it should be possible for Andrew to travel through time and arrive either in his past or future at the section for the 3000th century. However, that's not how Asimov depicted Eternity. His whole plot would collapse if Wendy's version of time travel were true.

Reality Chain

According to Wendy, the effect of Eternity on human society is to create a "slightly dull equilibrium". However,  Asimov went to a great deal of trouble to explain that the Eternals were constantly making Reality Changes that prevent Earthlings from making "harmful" technological advances. In other words (Wendy, are you listening?) the Reality depicted by Asimov (which we can call the Mallansohn Reality) involves a totally manipulated and altered pace for technological development. Asimov explicitly shows that the Mallansohn Reality has a completely different rate of technological advance than we should expect in our future. In our Reality, where Eternity does not exist, we are free to develop new technologies without the watchful Eternals being there, waiting to step in, remove dangerous technologies and "correct" our mistakes. It is a fool's errand to compare the pace of technological advance in Asimov's fictional Mallansohn Reality to what has happened in our world and then gloat or pretend to be surprised that Asimov could be so wrong about the pace of advance in electronics. We can conclude nothing about Asimov's "powers of prediction" just because it takes until the year 5,500 for a really good molecular voice recorder to be made in the Mallansohn Reality while we already have iPods.

The Eternal Past
Had the blurb writer actually gotten to the end of The End of Eternity then it should have been obvious that all of the events in the novel are depicted by Asimov as taking place in the past, not the future. At the end of the story, the time traveling Noÿs and Andrew arrive in the 1930s and begin their new lives as residents of the 20th century. Their arrival in the Primitive triggers a Reality Change, putting an end to Eternity and bringing into existence a new Reality, a whole new timeline in which the nature and pace of technological advance will be radically altered from what Asimov describes for the Mallansohn Reality.

The Hierion Domain

Science fiction authors have long invented imaginary particles in order to account for plot devices like faster-than-light travel or time travel. Within Eternity, in the playground of his imagination, Asimov spoke of there being seemingly material things that were actually immaterial. 

For the Exodemic Fictional Universe I imagine that in the future we Earthlings will discover that there are many more fundamental particles that go beyond our current Standard Model of hadronic matter.

I divide these additional particles into two families, the hierions and the sedrons.

Fun with Hierion Tubes.

Another long-time staple of science fiction stories are "extra dimensions". I like to imagine some kind of "explanation" or excuse for how Eternity could exist as a bubble beyond normal space-time. I've taken to using the term "hierion domain" to refer to the "location" of such space-time bubbles. Also, I use the term "hierion tube" to refer to the portals that link from the hadronic domain to the hierion domain.

Asimov wrote about "Eternity" as the place where the Eternals like Andrew lived out their lives and some readers never "got it". They never noticed that the Eternals do not normally travel into their own pasts. The whole point of The End of Eternity is that it could be dangerous to travel into the past...you could disrupt the very existence of Eternity itself. Of course, that is exactly the mission of meta-technician Noÿs.

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Cheesy Romance
In her review of The End of Eternity, Wendy wrote, "Cheesy as the love story inevitably is"...

Asimov is frequently criticized for his portrayal of Noÿs, in particular, and women, in general, in The End of Eternity. In my view, such criticisms make about as much sense as complaining in his life time Plato never proclaimed Jesus as Lord.

Meta-Technician

The Desired Response

Why is Noÿs in the story at all? Yes, she and Andrew fall in love, but really, that is not the point. Asimov was not trying to write a love story. In particular, Asimov was not trying to write a love story that would appeal to the many women who make it their business to criticize male science fiction authors for their inability to write love stories that appeal to women.

Noÿs is a meta-technician. As a Technician of Eternity, Andrew must slip into Time and secretly alter the course of history. As a meta-technician, Noÿs had to slip into Eternity and try to secretly destroy Eternity from within. 

As Noÿs ultimately explains to Andrew, using the advanced technology of her age (far in our future) she was able to look into their shared future and see that she and Andrew would fall in love and live happily together. For that reason, she selected him as her target for her mission to destroy Eternity. In my view, that is a very romantic notion. I applaud Asimov for realizing that he could create a fun story where the very nature of a male-dominated Eternity allowed for its easy destruction by a female secret agent from the far future. And yes, some women do recognize the brilliance of Asimov's plot and how he brought together Noÿs and Andrew from across a gulf of 10,000,000 years so that their love might be true.

Not About You

One of Asimov's rules for how to be a good reviewer of books is "the review must not be a showcase for the reviewer". And yet Wendy felt impelled to tell us about: 1) her education in the Palo Alto school system, 2) that her father worked for IBM, 3) the obscure model name (Kaypro) of her first computer and 4) how much she despised having to feed punch cards into a computer. Most annoyingly, Wendy had to inform readers of her own personal opinion: "Part of the pleasure of reading old science fiction is precisely this: with the special powers vested in you by historical hindsight, you can compare the playfully visionary forecasts with what actually took place." I've explained above, why playing that game, in the way that Wendy played it, is misguided and futile in the case of The End of Eternity. I suspect that what was really going on was that Wendy had gotten into a time machine and come back to warn us in 2010 that her book "Why I Read: The Serious Pleasure of Books" would be forthcoming and full of her opinions about the joy of reading.

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However, I think Asimov got into his time machine and went even further back in time to write a warning for reviewers like Wendy: "...this is the point where even the cleverest reviewer (perhaps especially the cleverest reviewer) can come a cropper". Asimov warned, "The purpose of the review is not to demonstrate the superior erudition of the reviewer or make it seem that the reviewer could write the book better than the author."

I'm glad that Wendy had fun pretending that The End of Eternity was a failed attempt to make "visionary forecasts", but I wish she had not shoe-horned her play time into her review of Asimov's book. Mercifully, Asimov himself did not have to read her review. Sadly, it provoked enough emotional reaction in me to cover both mine and Asimov's account. As an addendum to Asimov's rules for reviewers, I'd add the special Wendy Rule: don't go more than 500 words into your review before actually telling the reader about the story you are reviewing.

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Unearthly Powers

Source. Click image to enlarge.

I suppose that Wendy posted her review of The End of Eternity under the heading "Unearthly Powers" because she views the Eternals as "unearthly". However, the reason why Noÿs must destroy Eternity is because aliens on other worlds of the galaxy spread out and settle all the available planets while Earth concerns itself with time travel and "safe" technological development as selected by the Eternals. When humans of the far future finally developed practical technology for interstellar travel, it was too late. There was no place left in the galaxy for humans to spread out to from Earth and Humanity slowly died out. In order to give Humanity a chance to spread to the stars and survive, Eternity must be destroyed.

Daneel the conductor

Under the influence of John Campbell, Asimov developed the idea of an "all human galaxy". He even suggested the idea that robots had used time travel to create conditions in our galaxy so that we humans did not have to compete with alien species that had evolved on other worlds. Since most of Asimov's science fiction stories are set in the "all human galaxy" of the Foundation, The End of Eternity is something of an anomaly. At the very end of his Foundation Saga (in Foundation and Earth), Asimov suggested that aliens would eventually arrive in our galaxy from other galaxies.

In The End of Eternity, Asimov posed an interesting dilemma: what if human survival depends on our ability to harness the power of dangerous scientific discoveries like nuclear fission? Asimov depicted Noÿs as being certain that Humanity must risk using dangerous technologies. The potential damage that might be done outweighs the mundane existence that we would have if we always took the "safe alternative".

Exode

Exode
The Exode Trilogy is really a fan fiction sequel to both Asimov's Foundation Saga and The End of Eternity. I agree with Asimov about the important role that science fiction can play in stimulating the minds of readers. The Exode Trilogy is mental exercise that challenges readers to ask: what if aliens from distant worlds long ago visited Earth?

What if the very existence of the human species was made possible by aliens? Since the Exode story originated with my ruminations about Asimov's science fiction, I've found it impossible to resist inserting Asimov into my story as a character. I depict Asimov as a time traveler who is sent into his own past where he can help establish his own writing career.

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I had so much fun inserting Asimov into the Exode Trilogy that I also made myself a character in the story. As "the Editor" of the Trilogy, I must struggle to reveal and publicize the secret history of Earth. The story is still under construction and collaborating authors are welcome. With the recent loss of Ivory, I'm currently feeling the need for a new collaborator.

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Related Reading: my blog post about science fiction as a literary genre
2015: More comments and another non-review for The End of Eternity

Electric Pickle

electric pickle

.....finding myself deep into writing a "Year In Review: 2013" blog post and in need of a break from the mind-twisting task of sorting out details of the alternate Realities that appear in the Exode Trilogy.....

Humor and Science
The sodium-rich pickle shown to the right is glowing because electric current is passing through it. I've never heard if Edison tried a pickle in his experiments when he was trying to make a long-lasting light bulb.

Wizard of Menlo Park

"Armed with a better vacuum pump, Edison now turned to carbon as a potential filament. He sought a naturally occurring fiber that could be carbonized. Among the many fibers tried were human hairs, animal hairs, thinly sliced horn, all kinds of threads, and botanical specimens from around the world. In order to improve their strength, Edison tried impregnating the carbonized fibers with rock candy, whale oil, cotton oil, and any number of hydrocarbons. Ultimately, the most successful fiber proved to be thinly sliced strips of bamboo." (source)

Edison's persistent search for the perfect organic light bulb filament was something of a joke to scientists.

"Before the end of the filament search, some 6000 species of bamboo had been tried. Trained scientists shook their heads over Edison's bamboo search and his detractors have pointed to the effort as a monumental waste of time. They missed an important point, even if the search failed to generate a single usable filament, it did generate huge amounts of publicity." (source)

Salt

Science Nerds and Humor
For science nerds, the story of how the universe works is intrinsically fascinating. A chimpanzee will never be able to appreciate the beauty of oppositely charged sodium and chloride ions, even if it likes to eat salty pickles and can be dazzled by the beauty of salt crystals.

I first began to contemplate the role of humor in science when I read The Double Helix. Watson could not resist telling some funny stories that spice up the account of how the structure of DNA was deciphered. One such "spicy" anecdote concerned Crick's ability to irritate his boss.

Apparently Crick was extraordinarily upset by the "literary style" employed by Watson in The Double Helix. Our individual foibles can be amusing to others, but a public account of them might only provoke ire in the one who is most intimately involved. Often scientists like Crick and businessmen like Edison are so engaged with their work that they become trapped in the seriousness of their driven pursuit of a lofty "truth of nature" or some technical goal that will bring light to the world and $$$ to the bank account. Retaining the capacity to laugh at one's self is sometimes beyond the powers of those who become famous.

Eventually, after all the Nobel dust settled, Crick was able to understand that Watson wrote a piece of literature that would appeal to -and inspire- the next generation of science nerdlings. Really, science is done by mere mortals not paragons and doing science should be fun.

What about humor and play in science fiction?

Dick & Dorothy

Science Fiction Play
One of the first science fiction novels I read was the story of how Dick Seaton built a spaceship and went out to the stars on a great adventure. Edward Smith never let trivial issues like science facts get in the way of telling a fun adventure story (see: You Fail Science Forever).

Michael Swanwick wrote in analogy to the glowing electric pickle: "Shakespeare was an electric pickle, and so was Virginia Woolf .....They were hooked into the psychic electricity of their times. They took in more energy than one person can hold.....They shed light. Try it yourself: plug into the Zeitgeist. Feel the power. Now create a work of art. Shed the light."

Science fiction provides us with a literary paradox. The science community celebrates mavericks and visionaries who plug into the Zeitgeist and then, more importantly, find ways to escape from the Zeitgeist and, in so doing, manage to shed light on reality.

Hollywood and space aliens

The advice given by Swanwick is a formula for generating a type of science fiction that irritates me vastly. Hollywood can turn out vast numbers of mindless stories about invading aliens and other imagined horrors, stories well-suited to our Zeitgeist...and, of course, the $$$ keeps rolling in. Yawn. What, you have a complaint? Corporate science fiction moguls say, "I'm making money, so fuck you."

For idealistic science nerds, science fiction is about following the wonders of scientific discovery to new places where we have never been before, not endlessly repeating a formula for commercial success.

We are all told by the literati: if your story is not dark and dingy and full of angst and emotional confusion then you are not creating literary fiction, you are "just" a genre hack.

A chimp can never understand how sodium ions make human thought and emotion possible. The literati could understand and celebrate the beauty and fun of science, but they close their minds to the joy of discovery in preference for darkness.

Play & Science
As an example of literature that expresses the "wonders of science", Watson's The Double Helix illustrates the importance of playfulness in science: honest Jim, the young kid, fresh from school and the sticks in America, brings playful innocence to tired war-ravaged Europe. Playing with tinker toy models, Jim notices the way that base pairs can form the core of a DNA double helix.

All work and no play makes a scientist a dull and plodding work horse. Watson insisted: to do creative and ground breaking science, you need time to think creatively, to play with crazy new ideas and the opportunity to mix ideas between seemingly isolated scientific disciplines.

Invisible Characters

Visible: Hanks

Some people dislike science fiction authors who insert "cardboard cutout" characters into their plot-driven science fiction. Picture a Hollywood executive who is certain that you can't make an interesting movie about going to the Moon unless you have an interesting character in the film or a dangerous predicament that can tug at the emotions of the audience. That's the Zeitgeist of our time.....half a million people working together to push the limits of science and technology and send people to the Moon is boring. From the perspective of Hollywood, only the failed mission to the Moon is a story worth telling because of its "human drama".

Invisible: Kirth Gersen

The protagonist of Vance's Demon Princes novels is Kirth Gersen. Vance wrote: "Undoubtedly  he had lived a grim, cheerless existence. Thinking back across the years, scenes came crowding into his mind, all of which were variations on a single theme: other children occupied with irresponsible pleasure, while he, a rather thin boy with a grave face, watched from a distance." Gersen is a suitably colorless character for his role....he sometimes wonders if he is just a machine with no soul, crafted for the completion of a particular dreary task. Even after he becomes a billionaire, he must take pains to remain hidden and unknown to his enemies.

Emotional detachment is useful for a man like Gersen. When he innocently allows himself the luxury of asking a pretty girl out to dinner, she is kidnapped and raped by his enemies. Of course, were Vance to follow the "rules" for creating literary fiction then Gersen would have to suffer some kind of emotional turmoil because of his profession as an assassin. Ug. I prefer Vance's strategy, which, rather than following the formula that insists Gersen must change and grow as a person, allows him to persist little changed through his travails and ultimately Gersen is rewarded with a gift: in his long journeying between the stars he finally comes across the miraculous Alice Wroke, a girl who shares his unusual perspective on life.

Is Gersen "clenched and humorless"? He has a sense of humor, but he does not -can not- allow himself to indulge his desires for an easy and normal existence. Every time he begins to "lighten up" things go badly.

The Palace of Love
by Jack Vance
with the mad poet Navarth

The moment that Gersen's thoughts are tainted by the possibility of a comfortable life with Alusz, she is revolted by the nasty details of Gersen's existence. When Gersen instinctively prevents "Zan Zu" from going to Viole Falushe, it only brings the ire of Falushe down upon the poor girl and he sets about making her the next victim of his cloning experiments. When Gersen allows himself to imagine a life with the charming, stimulating and endearing Jerdian, her father brutally tells her to put the idea out of her thoughts.

Still, Gersen's sense of humor cannot be suppressed. In The Book of Dreams we see that Gersen is able to lighten up when he joins forces with Alice. He is comfortable and playful when in her company. Gersen even pens an amusing account of Howard Treesong's class reunion. Vance was judicious in allowing humor into the Demon Prince series. Even while not allowing Gersen much scope for humor, with characters around like Navarth the Mad Poet and the trickish Lens Larque, the reader gets a healthy dose of humor.

Humor in Exode

Parthney

When I had my original flash of insight for the Exode character Parthney, I saw in my mind a large and loud man, rather glib and brash who would not hesitate to brow beat Hana into abandoning her child and leaving Earth to go off on an adventure among the stars.

I soon found the need to explore Parthney's youth and origins on the planet Hemmal. The Buld who reside on Hemmal are largely a happy and carefree group. The guests at Demon Lodge enjoy performances by the local artists in residence, including Parthney. Parthney is a rebel who delights in explorations of his male sexuality.

Most people on Hemmal would be shocked by Parthney's antics, but he has an appreciative audience among the unusual collection of guests that have been attracted to Demon Lodge over the years. Unfortunately, because the Prelands are watching, the audience is calm and silent during the performance that appears in Exode. I picture most of Parthney's performances at Demon Lodge as raucous affairs spiced up by audience participation and much laughter.

Kach

The entire "Interventionists vs Overseers" dynamic in Exode is something of a joke. The Interventionists and Overseers take themselves very seriously, but the joke is on them. No matter what they do, the state of technological advancement on Earth is not going to be changed. I like the idea of his handlers being beside themselves when Parthney can never seem to take his mission to Earth seriously.

Parthney also has to deal with Kach and her earnest mission to find the Creators. Parthney falls deeply in love with Kach, but he can never share her faith in the existence of unseen Creators who Kach believes brought we humans into existence. However, the last laugh is on Parthney: the Huaoshy are responsible for the existence of our species.