Again, Dangerous Visions Part 17

There was nothing. The angel was dead.

I picked up the sword and the empty cup and, choosing a direction at random, began walking.

I opened my eyes and looked up at the Hindu hypnograph on the lower face of the upper bunk above me. Nearby the tape spun uselessly in my tape recorder. Flap flap flap flap.

I sat up and turned the machine off.

By the clock only about an hour had pa.s.sed. It seemed more like two thousand years.

I was still pretty high, but I knew, somehow, that the peak of the "trip" had pa.s.sed. I got dressed and went downstairs.

The mail had come. It was lying next to the front door, under the mail slot. I picked it up and glanced over it. There were two form letters, one from the John Birch Society and one from the Peace and Freedom Party. They both wanted me to join their organizations. Each wanted my help in fighting the other.

I took a coin from my pocket and looked at it for a while, smiling to myself.

Then I flipped it.

Afterword.

I have not written much science fiction in the last few years, though the little I have written has been well-received. The reason for this is simple. In spite of regularly repeated claims that the science fiction field enjoys a freedom of thought and speech greater than that found in any other field, my own experience has been that this boasted freedom is a pure illusion. In spite of the courageous efforts of such pioneers as Avram Davidson, Damon Knight, Phil d.i.c.k and Judith Merril, not one of my stories has reached print without either minor or major deletions designed to mollify the bluenoses.

There is a constant cry from editorial circles for new ideas and new writing approaches, but when this demand is answered by stories which dare to indicate that the s.e.xual morality or the political system we now enjoy may not last forever, or that even today there may be a rather large leap from where things are to where they officially are said to be, the call for "something new" is instantly replaced by calculations of what middle-western high-school librarians might consider proper. I love the science fiction field. I have loved it ever since childhood, but it seems to me that science fiction only rarely does more than scratch the surface of its potential, so long as it remains contained within the boundaries imposed by such calculations, so, even though, or perhaps because, I love the genre so well, I have turned my hand to other fields for the most part.

It is possible that, had not Harlan dared to break through the Middle-westernlibrarian Barrier, I would never have written another science fiction story. His anthology, Dangerous Visions Dangerous Visions, is the first ray of real hope I have seen in this country. One of the standard cornball plots in the field is the one where one man saves the whole universe. I used the plot once, in Eight O'Clock in the Morning Eight O'Clock in the Morning, but I never really believed in it until now. It may well turn out that one man, Harlan Ellison, actually will save the dying universe of science fiction writing.

In literature there is only one unforgivable sin, and that is not the portrayal of s.e.x or violence or unpopular religious and philosophical ideas. The one unforgivable sin is boredom. And science fiction, in recent years, has become boring. There have been signs of life in England, but up until Dangerous Visions Dangerous Visions the U.S. has gradually been sinking into the mud. Made-up jargon has pa.s.sed for technology, allowing the old entrenched fan to feel smug while making the story almost impossible for the new reader to understand. Story after story has revolved around phony "plants" of unimportant or incorrect tidbits of science. Story after story has marched the same old WASP engineer paperdoll through the same old story lines, most of which were very good when they were used by H. G. Wells, but which are now showing signs of wear. the U.S. has gradually been sinking into the mud. Made-up jargon has pa.s.sed for technology, allowing the old entrenched fan to feel smug while making the story almost impossible for the new reader to understand. Story after story has revolved around phony "plants" of unimportant or incorrect tidbits of science. Story after story has marched the same old WASP engineer paperdoll through the same old story lines, most of which were very good when they were used by H. G. Wells, but which are now showing signs of wear.

"Time Travel for Pedestrians" is a story I have had in my head for several years, ever since some experiences with LSD and numerous other drugs that showed me, among other things, how limited my views and the views of other SF writers were. When, at the annual science fiction convention in Oakland, Harlan mentioned that he was looking for stories for a second volume of Dangerous Visions Dangerous Visions, I instantly left the convention, went home and wrote "Time Travel" at one sitting, in an ecstasy of freedom and creative delight. I have been off drugs for over a year now, but in writing this story I got zonked out of my mind all over again. I still feel pretty high now, as I write this.

But what I'm high on is hope, the hope that now that Harlan has broken the ice we'll see some real fireworks again in the field...we'll see some controversy, some brilliance, some writing that has a real sense of life, some real guts and glory. I like Star Trek a lot, but I can't see tying down magazine and book science fiction to what could easily be broadcast over family TV. Even Star Trek, which feeds off ideas tried and proven in the magazine field, will eventually go stale unless there is a ma.s.sive influx of new approaches and ideas in the field as a whole. Like, it's no use picking a blank mind.

But now I'm high on hope, fellow fans.

Zonked out of my mind.

Please, baby, don't bring me down.

Introduction to CHRIST, OLD STUDENT IN A NEW SCHOOL.

Ladies and gentlemen, a man who needs no introduction...

Probably no other writer in this book could I get away with introducing in that way. But who in the civilized, book-reading world doesn't know the name Ray Bradbury? When the time came to write a few words to preface Ray, I suddenly was struck with the impossibility of the act. There have been whole treatises written on Bradbury, his poetic images, his humanity, his blue period, his chrome period...who the h.e.l.l was I to write about him?

Well, I'm a Bradbury fan, and that's not bad for openers. Not only because it indicates an affection for the man and his work that stretches back over twenty-one years to that first reading of "Pillar of Fire" in a copy of August Derleth's excellent The Other Side of the Moon The Other Side of the Moon anthology I'd pilfered from the Cleveland Heights High School library, but because too many chuckleheads have taken to balming their own mingey little egos by mumbling Bradbury ain't as good as we thought he was. I sneer at them; may the milk of their mothers turn to yogurt; may all their children be harelipped; may they (in the words of an ancient Yiddish curse) be so poor they come to me for a loan and may I be so poor I haven't got it! anthology I'd pilfered from the Cleveland Heights High School library, but because too many chuckleheads have taken to balming their own mingey little egos by mumbling Bradbury ain't as good as we thought he was. I sneer at them; may the milk of their mothers turn to yogurt; may all their children be harelipped; may they (in the words of an ancient Yiddish curse) be so poor they come to me for a loan and may I be so poor I haven't got it!

Ray Bradbury is very probably better than we ever imagined him to be in our wildest promotion of him as the first sf writer to escape the ghetto and win approbation from such as Isherwood, Wilder, Fadiman, Algren, Gilbert Highet, Graham Greene, Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffault and Bertrand Russell, for G.o.d's sake!

Let's face it, fellow sf readers, we've been living off Ray Bradbury's success for twenty years. Every time we try to hype some non-believer into accepting sf and fantasy as legitimate literature literature, we refer him or her to the works of Ray Bradbury. Who the h.e.l.l else have we produced who has approached the level of Bradbury for general acceptance? I mean, there's a Viking Portable Library Viking Portable Library edition of RAY BRADBURY. Sure, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov are well-known and much-beloved, but if you go out on the street and b.u.t.tonhole the average edition of RAY BRADBURY. Sure, Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov are well-known and much-beloved, but if you go out on the street and b.u.t.tonhole the average shmendrik shmendrik, and ask him to name a dozen famous American writers, if he isn't a dullard who'd name Erich Segal and Leon Uris and Jacqueline Whatshername, he'll rattle off Hemingway, Steinbeck, Mickey Spillane, maybe Faulkner, and very probably Bradbury. That's a load of ego-boost for all of us, and it's about time someone said it. When we do the conversion bit with scoffers, we whirl them over to the meager sf racks in most bookstores and we may find no Delany, no Lafferty, no Knight or Disch or d.i.c.kson, but by G.o.d we always find The Martian Chronicles The Martian Chronicles.

And we say, "Here try this. You'll love it." And the chances are we've handed the reluctant one "Small a.s.sa.s.sin" or "Mars is Heaven!" or "The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl" or Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451 or "I Sing the Body Electric" or "The Veldt" or "The Long Rain" or "A Sound of Thunder" or "The Jar" or...jeezus, once you get started it's impossible to stop remembering all those great moments you had from all those fine Bradbury stories, and I don't just mean excitement like seeing "The Kilimanjaro Machine" in or "I Sing the Body Electric" or "The Veldt" or "The Long Rain" or "A Sound of Thunder" or "The Jar" or...jeezus, once you get started it's impossible to stop remembering all those great moments you had from all those fine Bradbury stories, and I don't just mean excitement like seeing "The Kilimanjaro Machine" in Life Life or seeing "The Jar" done so it scared the p.i.s.s out of you on or seeing "The Jar" done so it scared the p.i.s.s out of you on The Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k Hour The Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k Hour. I mean those private blessed moments when you lay up on your back under a tree or on a sofa or down on the floor, and started reading something that began, "It was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Ill.u.s.trated Man."

I mean come on on, all you smarta.s.s literary cynics who make points off other men's careers, can you ever really really forget that thing that called to the foghorn from the sea? Can you really forget Uncle Einar? Can you put out of your mind all the black folk leaving for Mars, years before the black folk started telling you they wanted out? Can you forget Parkhill in "-And the Moon Be Still as Bright" doing target practice in one of the dead Martian cities, "shooting out the crystal windows and blowing the tops off the fragile towers"? There aren't many guys in our game who've given us so many treasurable memories. forget that thing that called to the foghorn from the sea? Can you really forget Uncle Einar? Can you put out of your mind all the black folk leaving for Mars, years before the black folk started telling you they wanted out? Can you forget Parkhill in "-And the Moon Be Still as Bright" doing target practice in one of the dead Martian cities, "shooting out the crystal windows and blowing the tops off the fragile towers"? There aren't many guys in our game who've given us so many treasurable memories.

And the really lovely thing about Bradbury is that he started out a fan, a runny-nosed, hungry-to-make-it fan like so many of us. Hung up on Lovecraft and Burroughs and Poe and Weird Tales Weird Tales and Walt Disney and Hemingway and Saroyan and d.i.c.kens and Malory's and Walt Disney and Hemingway and Saroyan and d.i.c.kens and Malory's Morte d'Arthur Morte d'Arthur, homage to all of whom he has paid in his fictions. But he had had it, he had that extra spark that fired him, and he made it; big enough and good enough and forever enough that now we take him a bit too much for granted. it, he had that extra spark that fired him, and he made it; big enough and good enough and forever enough that now we take him a bit too much for granted.

We see The Ill.u.s.trated Man The Ill.u.s.trated Man made into a not-too-distinguished film, and made into a not-too-distinguished film, and Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451 and the not-yet-released and the not-yet-released Pica.s.so Summer Pica.s.so Summer and maybe even some day (if they lick the script) and maybe even some day (if they lick the script) The Martian Chronicles The Martian Chronicles, and it becomes very chic to dismiss Ray Bradbury as though he were a literary snail like Segal. Well, not here, my friends. Here, Ray Bradbury gets his praise, because...well, it's my book in large part, and twice I've been in Bradbury's company where great things happened, and anybody wants to put down the author of "Henry IX" (which, under the t.i.tle "A Final Sceptre, a Lasting Crown" I tried to buy for DV), well they got to fight me first. And I'm mean.

I was going to go into detail about those two swell times I had with Bradbury-one at the newsstand on Cahuenga and Hollywood Boulevards, the other an afternoon we spent on the same podium with Frank Herbert, where the spark-gap was leapt and seven hundred California English teachers wept and laughed and gave us a standing ovation and for one of the rare moments in my life I truly truly believed, down to the gut core of myself, that it was the n.o.blest thing in the world to be a writer-but s.p.a.ce doesn't permit, and besides I'd rather tell it to you when we meet and have more time to talk. believed, down to the gut core of myself, that it was the n.o.blest thing in the world to be a writer-but s.p.a.ce doesn't permit, and besides I'd rather tell it to you when we meet and have more time to talk.

So I'll just tag out by saying Ray Bradbury is a man who has written some 300 stories that have been collected in books like The October Country, Dark Carnival, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The Ill.u.s.trated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Anthem Sprinters, I Sing the Body Electric!, The Martian Chronicles, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy, Dandelion Wine The October Country, Dark Carnival, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The Ill.u.s.trated Man, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Anthem Sprinters, I Sing the Body Electric!, The Martian Chronicles, A Medicine for Melancholy, The Machineries of Joy, Dandelion Wine and and Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston's production of Moby d.i.c.k Moby d.i.c.k (which, strangely, looks much better on a TV screen than in a theater). He also wrote the script for an animated film history of Hallowe'en in collaboration with Chuck Jones, (which, strangely, looks much better on a TV screen than in a theater). He also wrote the script for an animated film history of Hallowe'en in collaboration with Chuck Jones, The Halloween Tree The Halloween Tree, and he's now at work on a stage play t.i.tled Leviathan '99 Leviathan '99. He wrote a "s.p.a.ce age cantata" dealing with the possible images of Christ on other worlds, Christus Apollo Christus Apollo, music by Jerry Goldsmith, and he is a very good, kind, committed man who was in no small part responsible for getting LBJ booted out of office.

And he's the only man whose poetry I would have included in this, a book of stories. Well, maybe Robert Graves...

CHRIST, OLD STUDENT IN A NEW SCHOOL.

Ray Bradbury .

O come, please come, to the Poor Mouth Fair Where the Saints kneel round in their underwear And say out prayers that most need saying For needful sinners who've forgotten praying; And in every alcove and niche you spy The living dead who envy the long-since gone Who never wished to die.

Then, see the Altar! There the nailed-tight crucifix Where Man in place of Christ gives up the ghost, And priests with empty goblets offer Us As Host to Jesus Who, knelt at the rail, Wonders at the sight Of Himself kidnapped off cross and man nailed there In spite of all his cries and wails and grievements.

Why, why? he shouts, these nails?

Why all this blood and sacrifice?

Because, comes from the belfries, where The mice are scuttering the bells and mincing rope And calling down frail Alleluiahs To raise Man's hopes, said hopes being blown away On incensed winds while Christ waits there So long prayed to, He has Himself forgot the Prayer.

Until at last He looks along a glance of sun And asks His Father to undo this dreadful work This antic agony of fun.

No more! He echoes, too. No more!

And from the cross a murdered army cries: No more!

And from above a voice fused half of iron Half of irony gives man a dreadful choice.

The role is his, it says, Man makes and loads his dice, They sum at his behest He Dooms himself. He is his own jest.

Let go? Let be?

Why do you ask this gift from Me?

When, trussed and bound and nailed, You sacrifice your life, your liberty, You hang yourself upon the tenterhook!

Pull free!

Then suddenly, upon that cross immense, As Christ Himself gives stare Three billion men-in-one blink wide their eyes, aware!

Look left! Look right!

At hands, as if they'd never seen a hand before, Or spike struck into palm Or blood adrip from spike, No! never seen the like!

The wind that blew the benedictory doors And whispered in the cove and dovecot sky Now this way soughed and that way said: Your hand, your flesh, your spike.

You will to give and take, will to give and take, Accept the blow, lift the hammer high And give a thunderous plunge and pound, You make to die.

You are the dead.

You the a.s.sa.s.sin of yourself And you the blood And you the one Foundation Ground on which red spills You the whipping man who drives And you the Son who sweats all scarlet up the hills to Calvary; You the Crowd gathered for the thrill and urge You both composer and dear dread subject of the dirge You are the jailor and the jailed, You the impaler and you the one that your own Million-fleshed self in dreams by night Do hold in thrall and now at noon must kill.

Why have you been so blind?

Why have you never seen?

The slave and master in one skin Is all your history, no more, no less, Confess! This is what you've been!

The crowd upon the cross gives anguished roar; A moment terrible to hear.

Christ, crouched at the rail, no more can bear And so shuts up his ears with hands.

The sound of pain he's long since grown to custom in his wits, But this! the sound of wilful innocence awake To self-made wounds, these children thrown To Revelation and to light Is too much for his sanity and sight.

Man warring on himself an old tale is; But Man discovering the source of all his sorrow In himself, Finding his left hand and his right Are similar sons, are children fighting In the porchyards of the void?!

His pulse runs through his flesh, Beats at the gates of wrist and thigh and rib and throat, Unruly mobs which never heard the Law.

He answers panic thus: Now in one vast sad insucked gasp of loss Man pries, pulls free one hand from cross While from the other drops the mallet which put in the nail.

Giver and taker, this hand or that, his sad appraisal knows And knowing writhes upon the crucifix in dreadful guilt That so much time was wasted in this pain.

Ten thousand years ago he might have leapt off down To not return again!

A dreadful laugh at last escapes his lips; The laughter sets him free.

A Fool lives in the Universe! he cries.

That Fool is me!

And with one final shake of laughter Breaks his bonds.

The nails fall skittering to marble floors.

And Christ, knelt at the rail, sees miracle As Man steps down in amiable wisdom To give himself what no one else can give: His liberty.

And seeing there the Son who was in symbol vast Their flesh and all, Hands him an empty cup and bades Him drink His fill And Christ, gone drunk on laughter, Vents a similar roar, Three billion voices strong, That flings the bells in belfries high And slams, then opens, every sanctuary door; The bones in vaults in frantic vibrancy of xylophone Tell tunes of Saints, yes, Saints not marching in but out At this hilarious shout!

And having given wine to dissolve thrice ancient hairb.a.l.l.s And old sin, Now Man puts to the lips and tongue of Christ His last Salvation crumb, The wafer of his all-accepting smile, His gusting laugh, the joy and swift enjoyment of his image: Fool.

It is most hard to chew.

Christ, old student in a new school Having swallowed laughter, cannot keep it in; It works itself through skin like slivers From a golden door Trapped in the blood, athirst for air; Christ, who was once employed as single son of G.o.d Now finds himself among three billion on a billion Brother sons, their arms thrown wide to grasp and hold And walk them everywhere, Now weaving this way, now weaving that in swoons, Snuffing suns, breathing in light of one long Rambled aeon endless afternoon....

They reach the door and turn And look back down the aisle of years to see The rail, the altar cross, the spikes, the red rain, The sad sweet ecstasy of death and hope Abandoned, left and lost in pain; Once up the side of Calvary, now down Tomorrow's slope, Their palms still itching where the scar still heals, Into the marketplace where, so mad the dances And the reels, Christ the Lord Jesus is soon lost But found again uptossed now here, now there In every multi-billioned face! There! See!

Some sad sweet laughing shard of G.o.d's old Son Caught up in crystal blaze fired out at thee.

Ten thousand times a million sons of sons move Through one great and towering town Wearing their wits, which means their laughter As their crown. Set free upon the earth By simple gifts of knowing how mere mirth can cut the bonds And pull the blood spikes out; Their conversation shouts of "Fool!"

That word they teach themselves in every school, And, having taught, do not like Khayyam's scholars Go them out by that same door Where in they went, But go to rockets through the roofs To night and stars and s.p.a.ce, A single face turned upward toward all Time, One flesh, one ecstasy, one peace.

The cross falls into dust, the nails rust on the floor, The wafers, half-bit through, make smiles On pavements Where the wind by night comes round To sit in aisles in booths to listen and confess I am the dreamer and the doer I the hearer and the knower I the giver and the taker I am the sword and the wound of the sword.

If this be true, then let the sword fall free from hand.

I embrace myself.

I laugh until I weep And weep until I smile Then the two of us, murderer and murdered, Guilty and he who is without guile Go off to Far Centauri To leave off losings, and take on winnings, Erase all mortal ends, give birth to only new beginnings, In a billion years of morning and a billion years of sleep.

Afterword.

What to say about this poem? Say that it is a metaphor of Christ and Man and the fact of man finding himself trapped in a flesh where the Beast rends Human and the Human tries to tame the Beast. Out of this stuff comes War. The trial of man trying to become truly Human over the centuries, in spite of his blood-l.u.s.t, forces him to weep for his lost opportunities, his many murders, his dead children, done in by those Wars. Christ is the symbol of that failure, and the promise of new opportunities to have a final winning. So Bradbury says.