Dangerous Visions Read online

  Pre-Campbell science fiction all too often fell into one of two classes. They were either no-science or they were all-science. The no-science stories were adventure stories in which a periodic word of Western jargon was erased and replaced with an equivalent word of space jargon. The writer could be innocent of scientific knowledge, for all he needed was a vocabulary of technical jargon which he could throw in indiscriminately.

  The all-science stories were, on the other hand, populated exclusively by scientist-caricatures. Some were mad scientists, some were absent-minded scientists, some were noble scientists. The only thing they had in common was their penchant for expounding their theories. The mad ones screeched them, the absent-minded ones mumbled them, the noble ones declaimed them, but all lectured at insufferable length. The story was a thin cement caked about the long monologues in an attempt to give the illusion that those long monologues had some point.

  To be sure, there were exceptions. Let me mention, for instance, "A Martian Odyssey" by Stanley G. Weinbaum (who, tragically, died of cancer at the age of thirty-six). It appeared in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories—a perfect Campbellesque story four years before Campbell introduced his revolution.

  Campbell's contribution was that he insisted that the exception become the rule. There had to be real science and real story, with neither one dominating the other. He didn't always get what he wanted, but he got it often enough to initiate what old-timers think of as the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

  To be sure, each generation has its own Golden Age—but the Campbellesque Golden Age happens to be mine, and when I say "Golden Age" I mean that one. Thank goodness, I managed to get into the field just in time to have my stories contribute in their way (and a pretty good way it was too, and the heck with false modesty) to that Golden Age.

  Yet all Golden Ages carry within themselves the seeds of their own destruction and after it is over you can look back and unerringly locate those seeds. (Lovely, lovely hindsight! How sweet it is to prophesy what has already happened. You're never wrong!)

  In this case, Campbell's requirement for real science and real stories invited a double nemesis, one for the real science and one for the real stories.

  With real science, stories came to sound more and more plausible and, indeed, were more and more plausible. Authors, striving for realism, described computers and rockets and nuclear weapons that were very like what computers and rockets and nuclear weapons came to be in a matter of a single decade. As a result, the real life of the Fifties and Sixties is very much like the Campbellesque science fiction of the Forties.

  Yes, the science fiction writer of the Forties went far beyond anything we have in real life today. We writers did not merely aim for the Moon or send unmanned rockets toward Mars; we streaked through the Galaxy in faster-than-light drives. However, all our far-space adventures were based on the way of thought that today permeates NASA.

  And because today's real life so resembles day-before-yesterday's fantasy, the old-time fans are restless. Deep within, whether they admit it or not, is a feeling of disappointment and even outrage that the outer world has invaded their private domain. They feel the loss of a "sense of wonder" because what was once truly confined to "wonder" has now become prosaic and mundane.

  Furthermore, the hope that Campbellesque science fiction would storm upward in an increasingly lofty spiral of readership and respectability somehow was not fulfilled. Indeed, an effect rather unforeseen made itself evident. The new generation of potential science fiction readers found all the science fiction they needed in the newspapers and general magazines and many no longer experienced an irresistible urge to turn to the specialized science fiction magazines.

  It happened, therefore, that after a short-lived spurt in the first half of the 1950s, when all the golden dreams seemed to be coming true for the science fiction writer and publisher, there was a recession and the magazines are not more prosperous now than they were in the 1940s. Not even the launching of Sputnik I could stay that recession; rather it accelerated it.

  So much for the nemesis brought on by real science. And real story?

  As long as science fiction was the creaky medium it was in the Twenties and Thirties, good writing was not required. The science fiction writers of the time were safe, reliable sources; while they lived, they would write science fiction, since anything else required better technique and was beyond them. (I hasten to say there were exceptions and Murray Leinster springs to the mind as one of them.)

  The authors developed by Campbell, however, had to write reasonably well or Campbell turned them down. Under the lash of their own eagerness they grew to write better and better. Eventually and inevitably, they found they had become good enough to earn more money elsewhere and their science fiction output declined.

  Indeed, the two dooms of the Golden Age worked hand in hand to a certain extent. A considerable number of the Golden Age authors followed the essence of science fiction in its journey from fiction into fact. Men such as Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, Lester del Rey, and Clifford D. Simak took to writing science fact.

  They didn't change, really; it was the medium that changed. The subjects they had once dealt with in fiction (rocketry, space travel, life on other worlds, etc.) shifted from fiction to fact, and the authors were carried along in the shift. Naturally, every page of non-science fiction written by these authors meant one page less of science fiction.

  Lest some knowledgeable reader begin, at this point, to mutter sarcastic comments under his breath, I had better admit, at once and quite openly, that of all the Campbellesque crew, I possibly made the change most extremely. Since Sputnik I went up and America's attitude toward science was (at least temporarily) revolutionized, I have, as of this moment, published fifty-eight books, of which only nine could be classified as fiction.

  Truly, I am ashamed, embarrassed and guilt-ridden, for no matter where I go and what I do, I shall always consider myself as a science fiction writer first. Yet if the New York Times asks me to colonize the Moon and if Harper's asks me to explore the edge of the Universe, how can I possibly refuse? These topics are the essence of my life-work.

  And in my own defense, let me say that I have not entirely abandoned science fiction in its strictest sense either. The March 1967 issue of Worlds of If (on the stands as I write) contains a novelette of mine entitled "Billiard Ball."

  But never mind me, back to science fiction itself . . . .

  What was science fiction's response to this double doom? Clearly the field had to adjust, and it did. Straight Campbellesque material could still be written, but it could no longer form the backbone of the field. Reality encroached too closely upon it.

  Again there was a science-fictional revolution in the early Sixties, marked most clearly perhaps in the magazine Galaxy under the guidance of its editor, Frederik Pohl. Science receded and modern fictional technique came to the fore.

  The accent moved very heavily toward style. When Campbell started his revolution, the new writers who came into the field carried with them the aura of the university, of science and engineering, of slide rule and test tube. Now the new authors who enter the field bear the mark of the poet and the artist, and somehow carry with them the aura of Greenwich Village and the Left Bank.

  Naturally, no evolutionary cataclysm can be carried through without some pretty widespread extinctions. The upheaval that ended the Cretaceous Era wiped out the dinosaurs, and the changeover from silent movies to talkies eliminated a horde of posturing mountebanks.

  So it was with science fiction revolutions.

  Read through the list of authors in any science fiction magazine of the early Thirties, then read through the list in a science fiction magazine of the early Forties. There is an almost complete changeover, for a vast extinction had taken place and few could make the transition. (Among the few who could were Edmond Hamilton and Jack Williamson.)

  Between the Forties and the Fifties there was little change. The Campbellesque pe
riod was still running its course and this shows that the mere lapse of ten years is not in itself necessarily crucial.

  But now compare the authors of a magazine in the early Fifties with a magazine today. There has been another changeover. Again some have survived, but a whole flood of bright young authors of the new school has entered.

  This Second Revolution is not as clean-cut and obvious as the First Revolution had been. One thing present now that was not present then is the science fiction anthology, and the presence of the anthology blurs the transition.

  Each year sees a considerable number of anthologies published, and always they draw their stories from the past. In the anthologies of the Sixties there is always a heavy representation of the stories of the Forties and Fifties, so that in these anthologies the Second Revolution has not yet taken place.

  That is the reason for the anthology you now hold in your hands. It is not made up of stories of the past. It consists of stories written now, under the influence of the Second Revolution. It was precisely Harlan Ellison's intention to make this anthology represent the field as it now is, rather than as it then was.

  If you look at the table of contents you will find a number of authors who were prominent in the Campbellesque period—Lester del Rey, Poul Anderson, Theodore Sturgeon, and so on. They are writers who are skillful enough and imaginative enough to survive the Second Revolution. You will also find, however, authors who are the products of the Sixties and who know only the new era. They include Larry Niven, Norman Spinrad, Roger Zelazny and so on.

  It is idle to suppose that the new will meet universal approval. Those who remember the old, and who find this memory inextricably intertwined with their own youths, will mourn the past, of course.

  I will not hide from you the fact that I mourn the past. (I am being given full leeway to say what I want, and I intend to be frank.) It is the First Revolution that produced me and it is the First Revolution that I keep in my heart.

  That is why, when Harlan asked me to write a story for this anthology, I backed away. I felt that any story I wrote would strike a false note. It would be too sober, too respectable, and, to put it bluntly, too darned square. So I have agreed to write a foreword instead; a sober, respectable and utterly square foreword.

  And I invite those of you who are not square, and who feel the Second Revolution to be your revolution, to meet examples of the new science fiction as produced by the new (and some of the old) masters. You will find here the field at its most daring and experimental; may you therefore be appropriately stimulated and affected!

  ISAAC ASIMOV

  February 1967

  1967: FOREWORD 2—HARLAN AND I

  by Isaac Asimov

  This book is Harlan Ellison. It is Ellison-drenched and Ellison-permeated. I admit that thirty-two other authors (including myself in a way) have contributed, but Harlan's introduction and his thirty-two prefaces surround the stories and embrace them and soak them through with the rich flavor of his personality.

  So it is only fitting that I tell the story of how I came to meet Harlan.

  The scene is a World Science Fiction Convention a little over a decade ago. I had just arrived at the hotel and I made for the bar at once. I don't drink, but I knew that the bar would be where everybody was. They were indeed all there, so I yelled a greeting and everyone yelled back at me.

  Among them, however, was a youngster I had never seen before: a little fellow with sharp features and the livest eyes I ever saw. Those live eyes were now focused on me with something that I can only describe as worship.

  He said, "Are you Isaac Asimov?" And in his voice was awe and wonder and amazement.

  I was rather pleased, but I struggled hard to retain a modest demeanor. "Yes, I am," I said.

  "You're not kidding? You're really Isaac Asimov?" The words have not yet been invented that would describe the ardor and reverence with which his tongue caressed the syllables of my name.

  I felt as though the least I could do would be to rest my hand upon his head and bless him, but I controlled myself. "Yes, I am," I said, and by now my smile was a fatuous thing, nauseating to behold. "Really, I am."

  "Well, I think you're—" he began, still in the same tone of voice, and for a split second he paused, while I listened and the audience held its breath. The youngster's face shifted in that split second into an expression of utter contempt and he finished the sentence with supreme indifference, "—a nothing!"

  The effect, for me, was that of tumbling over a cliff I had not known was there, and landing flat on my back. I could only blink foolishly while everyone present roared with laughter.

  The youngster was Harlan Ellison, you see, and I had never met him before and didn't know his utter irreverence. But everyone else there knew him and they had waited for innocent me to be neatly poniarded—and I had been.

  By the time I struggled back to something like equilibrium, it was long past time for any possible retort. I could only carry on as best I might, limping and bleeding, and grieving that I had been hit when I wasn't looking and that not a man in the room had had the self-denial to warn me and give up the delight of watching me get mine.

  Fortunately, I believe in forgiveness, and I made up my mind to forgive Harlan completely—just as soon as I had paid him back with interest.

  Now you must understand that Harlan is a giant among men in courage, pugnacity, loquacity, wit, charm, intelligence—indeed, in everything but height.

  He is not actually extremely tall. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he is quite short; shorter, even, than Napoleon. And instinct told me, as I struggled up from disaster, that this young man, who was now introduced to me as the well-known fan, Harlan Ellison, was a trifle sensitive on that subject. I made a mental note of that.

  The next day at this convention I was on the platform, introducing notables and addressing a word of kindly love to each as I did so. I kept my eye on Harlan all this time, however, for he was sitting right up front (where else?).

  As soon as his attention wandered, I called out his name suddenly. He stood up, quite surprised and totally unprepared, and I leaned forward and said, as sweetly as I could:

  "Harlan, stand on the fellow next to you, so that people can see you."

  And while the audience (a much larger one this time) laughed fiendishly, I forgave Harlan and we have been good friends ever since.

  ISAAC ASIMOV

  February 1967

  1967: INTRODUCTION

  THIRTY-TWO SOOTHSAYERS

  by Harlan Ellison

  What you hold in your hands is more than a book. If we are lucky, it is a revolution.

  This book, all two hundred and thirty-nine thousand words of it, the largest anthology of speculative fiction ever published of all original stories, and easily one of the largest of any kind, was constructed along specific lines of revolution. It was intended to shake things up. It was conceived out of a need for new horizons, new forms, new styles, new challenges in the literature of our times. If it was done properly, it will provide these new horizons and styles and forms and challenges. If not, it is still one helluva good book full of entertaining stories.

  There is a coterie of critics, analysts and readers who contend that "mere entertainment" is not enough, that there must be pith and substance to every story, a far-reaching message or philosophy or super-abundance of superscience. While there is certainly merit in their contentions, it has all too often become the raison d'être for the fiction, this sententious preoccupation with saying things. While we can no more suggest that fairy tales are the loftiest level to which modern fiction should attain than that the theory should dwarf the plot, we would be forced to opt for the former rather then the latter, were we chained down with the threat of bamboo slivers under the fingernails.

  Happily, this book seems to hit directly in the mid-target area. Each story is almost obstinately entertaining. But each one is filled with ideas as well. Not merely run-of-the-pulps ideas you've read a
hundred times before, but fresh and daring ideas; in their way, dangerous visions. (Though, actually, a trope rather than a parameter.)

  Why all this chatter about entertainment versus ideas? In an introduction of some length, to a book of even greater length? Why not let the stories speak for themselves? Because . . .though it may waddle like a duck, quack like a duck, look like a duck and go steady with ducks, it need not necessarily be a duck. This is a collection of ducks that will turn into swans before your very eyes. These are stories so purely entertaining that it seems inconceivable the impetus for their being written was an appeal for ideas. But such was the case, and as you wonderingly witness these ducks of entertainment change into swans of ideas, you will be treated to a thirty-three-story demonstration of "the new thing"—the nouvelle vague, if you will, of speculative writing.

  And therein, gentle readers, lies the revolution.