Again, Dangerous Visions Part 37

These stories should not be taken as anything more than finger exercises. It's sometimes relaxing and restorative for writers to do a story with the little finger after long periods of working with both fists. I can tell you from long experience that it's hard, and very tiring, to do any extended typing with both hands balled into fists. It results, among other things, in a lot of misspellings.

These stories are in a minor, though I would hope not altogether trivial, key. One thing they are trying to say is that you can't get any fiction of consequence out of science unless you gain enough elevation over the subject to see that science is not coterminous with the human condition, however much its increasingly demonic and mindless energies seem nowadays to be devoted to curing that condition through the process of elimination. Which, to be sure, would eliminate science, too. But it takes somebody more or other than a scientist or sf writer to see that. It also requires a science-freed eye to see how plain f.u.c.king boring much of science is, a concept foreign to both scientists and sf writers.

"The Bisquit Position" has to do with the reactions of a handsome Alaskan malamute to napalm-not the concept of napalm, the experience. Napalm is a direct product of science, again, one the sf people didn't manage to dream up in the head before the scientists got it sizzling in, and on, the flesh. The att.i.tude of a goodlooking, intelligent dog to the experience of napalm, not the concept of it, does, I contend, go somewhat beyond the purlieus of sf, particularly since the sf people, being so busy writing their highly imaginative TV scripts for "Lost in s.p.a.ce" and "Star Trek," seldom get around to expressing much of an att.i.tude toward napalm.

This is a story much more about Vietnam, even, in the end, about human att.i.tudes toward meat both human and animal, than about napalm and, therefore, science. Sf writers don't seem to be notably up in arms about the U. S.-stagemanaged b.e.s.t.i.a.lities in Vietnam. They don't seem to get into politics much at all.

You'll never get science to stir up any real social conscience in scientists, they're much too busy smas.h.i.+ng society and its environs under various military-industrial-complex contracts. But if science doesn't generate some pretty hot politics in sf writers they're clearly cases of tails wagging dogs.

That rule can be broadened. If consciousness in general doesn't bring out some d.a.m.ned booming politics in writers in general, especially in these deadend times, the proof is in that said writers are unconscious.

"The Girl With Rapid Eye Movements," on the other hand, is a facetious, though perhaps not entirely beside the point, treatment of the thesis that rock lyricists, who put themselves forth as the free-est minds and souls, really dictate their lyrics to each other. The medium through which the dictation takes place (in this case, anyhow) is ESP during a period of REM, or deep-sleep dreaming, for both parties, which does put us in the realm of science of a sort. (In other more frequent cases the medium for the dictation is plagiarism, which can account for some very rapid eye movements indeed.) Somewhat below all this horseplay I am concerned, I think, with the ways in which officious parties of various sorts are now beginning to monitor our dreams, having run out of daylight activities to break and enter. The monitoring devices, again, are derived from the new sciences of eavesdropping and peeepingtometry, so I suppose for this reason too we might say the story at least brushes the science world, before recoiling in utter disgust.

But the heroine of this story is both prescient and indifferent to science, having at her disposal means of reaching into other people's heads, particularly male ones, that came into being long before the wheel. She is, of course, none other than Robert Graves' White G.o.ddess, whom I have taken the liberty of dressing in see-through blouse and tie-dyed bell-bottoms.

One of the most discouraging things about scientists-as about the sf writers who dog them around hoping to catch a dropped idea-is that they've so completely lost sight of the W. G. who inspires us all as to imagine they themselves are responsible for their fancy and fevered imaginings. Now you know and I know it just doesn't work that way. I'm not giving you the dismal cliche about behind every successful man stands a woman. I don't know what self-respecting woman would be caught dead behind the scientists and sf writers of today. But some dire presence, some hag form of the proud old Muse, one of the Gorgons, Medusa, say, maybe all three Furies, has got to be tickling these people from behind. They just couldn't be the una.s.sisted authors of their dread works. Nor can I see why they'd claim to be. If I had anything to do with work like that I'd sure want to claim some collaboration.

I suppose we can't blame the scientists too much for this blind spot; they're too busy with their military contracts to look upward or backward, let alone inward. But sf writers are definitely to be faulted for such oversight. The Pale but Potent Lady, Graves has made very clear, inspires all art, for those who can open themselves to the communion. It's the sf writers' blindness to this Faded Femme Fatale, inherited from the scientists they so venerate and panhandle from, that prevents their work from being inspired. The droppings from science may give a writer thin formulas to play with; the electric emanations of the Unpushy Muse might give him fervor.

Orwell's 1984 is taken by many to be a cla.s.sic work of sf. The one thing we know for sure about 1984, whatever else in it may hold your m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic interest, is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the year 1984 we'll all too soon be encountering.

Orwell-and Bradbury after him-could extrapolate into the future no horrors more s.h.i.+very than thought control and book-burning. We know now that thought has less and less to be controlled because it is being less and less engaged in. As for books, they won't have to be burned. Right now unsold paperbacks by the millions are being sold to road contractors to be used as fill under freeways.

The way to get rid of troublemaking printed matter is simply to make more and more narcolepsis-producing films, up to the point at which all the image-makers and imager-consumers will sleepwalk to the polls to elect Marshall McLuhan president by acclamation.

Repression is not in the future so much as more and more celluloid. Why scare people with horror stories about books being burned? Pretty soon you're not going to be able to give them away.

I have somewhat arbitrarily given this brace of stories the overall t.i.tle of "Monitored Dreams and Strategic Cremations" because I think science is working very hard to make for us a world of collectivized dreaming and stepped-up missionary work-in other lands and on the home front, too-with updated weapons of instant cookery. Thanks to science, and the aura of untouchability given to it by sf, they'll be programmatically charcoaling our outsides (in the name of making the world safe for the ants, or some up-and-coming virus) while systematically trespa.s.sing on our insides (in the name of data collection, census taking, keeping the computers well-fed). This, or something very like it, is what capitalism offers us as it enters its amuck, apocalyptic phase.

Science has from the beginning-been what it most spectacularly is now, the handmaiden of capitalism. Sf has all along been the handmaiden of, as well as the parasite on, science. This is a treason to the profession of writing, which in its serious forms can be a handmaiden of nothing but disdain for, and a.s.sault upon, that-which-is.

They will, of course, improve their dream monitoring in order to make their cremations more strategic. With the technical a.s.sistance of the for-anybody's-hire scientists. And the gleeful sidelines cheers of their sf votaries.

Those subversive enough to go on reading instead of living other people's lives out in the movies can do something to stymie the scientists. All they have to do is stymie the governments and social systems that harness the scientists to do their proliferating monitory and cremational work. Stymie, in this context, means, quite simply, overthrow.

I mean, the decade ahead has got to be a period of the most radical ma.s.s politicalization and polarization. Now, as in the thirties, we are emerging from a time of s.e.xual revolt, that is, bohemianism, into a time of political revolt, that is, social revolutionism. Put another way, the bohemianism of the sixties, paralleling that of the twenties, is beginning to be bristlingly politicalized, in a way that promises to make the farthest-left politics of the proletarianized thirties look like amateur night.

Sure as shooting, and I use the term advisedly, revolutions are going to come in wholesale lots in the years ahead. Whether or not they win and, further, manage not to degenerate or grow fatcat, will depend in large measure on whether enough people stop living ersatz lives in the movies, and filling their heads with the irrelevant muzzy junk of sf, and lose their awe of scientists, who are an integral part of what has got to be overthrown. And turn to reading again, that is, reading in the realm of ideas, rasping ideas, incendiary ideas, which would mean a boredom, finally, with sf, which is simply films, formulas, honed mindlessness put on the printed page in place of literature.

I have a dangerous vision. I have a dangerous vision. I have a dangerous vision. I see capitalism once and for all overthrown; truly overthrown, not just replaced with a new power structure just as fawning upon scientists and just as exploitative of them and their fake charisma as ever was the old. The only land of socialism or communism I'm interested in is one that makes science and scientists look a little bit ridiculous, to be humored, maybe, but never taken in by; never catered to, always kept in their place. Humanism-and if communism isn't humanism, as Marx and Engels defined it, it is nothing-is incompatible with scientism.

And so, an end, finally, finally, to the reactionism that is at the heart of sf, all technology-wors.h.i.+p. An end to all the soupy mysticisms that, whether they mean to or not, bolster the s...o...b..ring profit economy, all low-level intellectual handmaidens to the Great G.o.d Mammon.

And, of course, to this slime of a capitalist terminal-case order that breeds such scientist slaveys and sf hangers-on-what a bonus.

Introduction to WITH A FINGER IN MY I.

One of the most peculiar of all the superpeculiar facets of the "sf writer generality" is that so many of our most outstanding writers live life-styles that are the very ant.i.thesis of what their stories deal with. I'll give you a couple of f'rinstances.

Isaac Asimov writes some of the most far-flung fictions ever conceived by the mind of mortal man (and I'm not just referring to The Sensual Dirty Old Man The Sensual Dirty Old Man by "Dr. A."). But he won't fly in airplanes. s.p.a.ce journeys to the far side of the Universe he dashes off with his left hand, but his right trembles like a spastic's when he nears a 747. by "Dr. A."). But he won't fly in airplanes. s.p.a.ce journeys to the far side of the Universe he dashes off with his left hand, but his right trembles like a spastic's when he nears a 747.

Robert Silverberg has written novels in which tri-vid and holograms are commonplaces, yet until recently he wouldn't have a TV set in his house.

I won't name any names, because I don't feel like belittling my friends, but if pressed to the wall (like if for instance you had my mother and were holding her as hostage in the matter) I could rattle off the names of a dozen top sf writers whose stories deal exclusively with the living habits and mores of worlds-of-tomorrow, who write with familiarity and detail that borders on minutiae, of the dress and speech patterns of the world of the future. Yet every one of them dresses as though it was the early 1940's, and they speak slang straight out of Studs Lonigan Studs Lonigan. They even vocally put down the creature comforts provided by the technological wonders their stories have predicted. It is as if they conceived of those wonders as worthwhile only as long as they were figments of the imagination; but let them become realities and they are treated with the contempt usually reserved by writers for one of their number who hits with a bestseller.

And so now, with a new generation of sf writers emerging, many of whom are living life-styles the older and more reserved members of the clan might call "pointless" or "counter productive" because they resemble too much the way of the hippie, we have the first of the sf writers to come to us not from pulp magazines or hardcovers or even the mainstream...but from television.

The first sf child of his times, David Gerrold.

David Gerrold, ne ne David Jerrold Friedman, got his break writing for David Jerrold Friedman, got his break writing for Star Trek Star Trek, the television series so popular a few years ago. He wrote for that series a segment t.i.tled "The Trouble with Tribbles" that was marked by inventiveness, humor of the whacky Henry Kuttner sort, expertise in the medium of visual effects, and professionalism of a high order. I a.s.sure those of you writers who put down scriptwriting as a b.a.s.t.a.r.d form of the art, that it is a highly complex, very demanding and difficult medium in which to work. I wish I had a dollar for every Big Name sf writer who thought he could just waltz into TV scriptwriting, and a month later, right around pick-up&cut-off time, was slid out the studio gates on his Big Name backside. So when I say David Gerrold's first time out was marked by expertise and professionalism, I am not just whistling Apartheid.

David sold "The Trouble with Tribbles" in 1967. It was nominated for a Hugo award in the category of Best Dramatic Presentation by the World Science Fiction Convention (held in Berkeley in 1968), and came in second behind another Star Trek Star Trek script, which is pretty fair for a first-timer. At that convention, incidentally, the ancient and onerous fan custom of auctioning off an hour of a writer's time-the monies to be donated to the convention sinking fund-if you have attended a sf convention you know the word "sinking" is used advisedly-was once again pursued. Your editor was auctioned off for seventy-two dollars, Gerrold was auctioned off for twenty-two dollars and one of his furry little tribbles was auctioned off for twenty-two dollars script, which is pretty fair for a first-timer. At that convention, incidentally, the ancient and onerous fan custom of auctioning off an hour of a writer's time-the monies to be donated to the convention sinking fund-if you have attended a sf convention you know the word "sinking" is used advisedly-was once again pursued. Your editor was auctioned off for seventy-two dollars, Gerrold was auctioned off for twenty-two dollars and one of his furry little tribbles was auctioned off for twenty-two dollars and fifty cents and fifty cents, which says something about the market value of six foot tall, one hundred and fifty pound, brown-haired, hazel-eyed Star Trek Star Trek scenarists, as compared to useless b.a.l.l.s of fluff. But then, no one ever denied that scenarists, as compared to useless b.a.l.l.s of fluff. But then, no one ever denied that Star Trek Star Trek "trekkies" are bats from the git-go. "trekkies" are bats from the git-go.

Moving right along...

Since the unseemly notoriety attendant on airing of his script, David (born an Aquarian on 1/24/44) sold other teleplay treatments and episodes to Star Trek Star Trek, most of which never got past the preliminary stages. The sanity and ethics of some of the Star Trek Star Trek production personnel has frequently been called into question, but in this case the lucidity of their caution and good sense s.h.i.+nes through like a nova. production personnel has frequently been called into question, but in this case the lucidity of their caution and good sense s.h.i.+nes through like a nova.

Surging forward from this impressive career opener, David struck forcefully on several creative fronts: He was hired to write a film treatment for Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land Stranger in a Strange Land and was fired (David swears) for doing it right. That is, the "producer," a Hollywood type gentleman who'd bought the book because his girl friend had read it, though and was fired (David swears) for doing it right. That is, the "producer," a Hollywood type gentleman who'd bought the book because his girl friend had read it, though he he hadn't, fired David when our Gerrold told him to take his girl friend's ideas for the way the movie should be written and jam them up his, her, or both their nether apertures in the key of C#. (He was also hired to develop an original screen story t.i.tled hadn't, fired David when our Gerrold told him to take his girl friend's ideas for the way the movie should be written and jam them up his, her, or both their nether apertures in the key of C#. (He was also hired to develop an original screen story t.i.tled Whatever Happened to Millard Fillmore? Whatever Happened to Millard Fillmore?) As of this writing, neither film has seen release, though Gerrold has.

He sold a plethora of stories to magazines and original anthologies, including Harry Harrison's NOVA and A,DV. The story you are about to read was David's third or fourth submission. He first submitted a very long, incredibly moronic thing called "In the Deadlands." Very dumb story. Full of pages of pseudo artsycraftsy nonsense like this: The men tramped all that day.

Tramp.

Tramp.

Tramp.

Tramp.

Tramp.

They tramped into the night.

And that's all there'd be on the d.a.m.ned page. I'd have had to pay him five thousand dollars for the use of the silly thing, just on page-count alone. No, we are much better off with the story herein offered. Besides, it's a goodie.

He wrote novels and sold them. The Flying Sorcerers The Flying Sorcerers (originally t.i.tled "The Misspelled Magishun") in collaboration with Larry Niven, published in August of 1971 by Ballantine. (originally t.i.tled "The Misspelled Magishun") in collaboration with Larry Niven, published in August of 1971 by Ballantine. Yesterday's Children Yesterday's Children, bought but as of this writing unpublished by Dell. Spring 1972, The s.p.a.ce Skimmer The s.p.a.ce Skimmer, from Ballantine and a book of short stories, still unt.i.tled. When Harlie Was One When Harlie Was One, from Ballantine, late 1972,, and a sequel to The s.p.a.ce Skimmer The s.p.a.ce Skimmer in early 1973. Additionally, a first hardcover sale: to Random House: in early 1973. Additionally, a first hardcover sale: to Random House: The Man Who Folded Himself The Man Who Folded Himself.

He edited anthologies. The much-touted and long-awaited Generation Generation, from Dell, featuring new writers; and Protostars Protostars from Ballantine. from Ballantine.

All of this while working full-time as a clerk in a liquor store. Now tell me Gerrold doesn't have all the credentials for being a great great science fiction writer! science fiction writer!

But all kidding aside, folks...

David recently returned from a five month stay in Ireland. He lived in a suburb of Dublin called Dun Laoghaire, just four blocks from James Joyce Tower and a few miles from fellow expatriate sf'er Anne McCaffrey. He swears he had nothing to do with feeding the Protestants to the Catholics.

Let's see, is there anything else you should know about Gerrold? Mmm, yeah, a few things.

*He graduated from San Fernando Valley State College in 1967 with a B.A. in Theater Arts, and prior to his graduation attended Los Angeles Valley Junior College where he majored in Art and Journalism, and then University of Southern California majoring in Cinema.

*His professional career began in 1963 at the age of 19 when he produced a ten-minute animated educational film called A Positive Look at Negative Numbers A Positive Look at Negative Numbers for which he wrote the script, did the animation, inked and painted eels and there from received honorable mention for same from the Educational Film Library a.s.sociation. for which he wrote the script, did the animation, inked and painted eels and there from received honorable mention for same from the Educational Film Library a.s.sociation.

*He plays the violin. Not terribly distinguishedly.

*He is an alumnus of the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, out of which your editor was hurled in 1954 at Ohio State University, and about which your editor a.s.sures you nothing good can be said. Scratch two points for Gerrold.

*In 1968, when he received his Hugo nomination, he was 23 years old, the youngest active member of the Writers Guild of America, the guild of the Hollywood TV and film writers.

And finally, about this story, and its acquisition, the following must be said, merely to keep Gerrold in his place. Next to your editor, whose ego problems have been diagnosed in detail by no less a psychiatric authority than the European sf novelist Stanislaw Lem (whose conclusions about me terminate just this side of my being incarcerated as a dangerous psychopath), David Gerrold has an egomania terrible to confront. When he offered this story for publication, though it was worth the same money offered to all other authors in the book, I insisted he take one-third the rate, just to break into A,DV. It was an act of love and compa.s.sion, not parsimoniousness, I a.s.sure you.

For without these little acts intended to bring David back to Earth regularly, with a background and a promise of wonders such as David has already shown, he would be barely tolerable.

I know you will read this story, bearing these facts in mind, with reserve and dispa.s.sion. And when you tell him how much you liked it, do it left-handedly.

After all, we have to live with him.

WITH A FINGER IN MY I.

David Gerrold When I looked in the mirror this morning, the pupil was gone from my left eye. Most of the iris had disappeared too. There was just a blank white area and a greasy smudge to indicate where the iris had previously been.

At first I thought it had something to do with the contact lenses, but then I realized that I don't wear lenses. I never have.

It looked kind of odd, that one blank eye staring back at me, but the unsettling thing about it was that I could still see out of it. When I put my hand over my good right eye, I found that the eyesight in my left was as good as ever and it worried me.

If I hadn't been able to see out of it, I wouldn't have worried. It would have meant only that during the night I had gone blind in that eye. But for the pupil of the eye to just fade away without affecting my sight at all-well, it worried me. It could be a symptom of something serious.

Of course, I thought about calling the doctor, but I didn't know any doctors and I felt a little bit embarra.s.sed about troubling a perfect stranger with my problems. But there was that eye and it kept staring at me, so finally I went looking for the phone book.

Only, the phone book seemed to have disappeared during the night. I had been using it to prop up one end of the bookshelf and now it was gone. So was the bookshelf-I began to wonder if perhaps I had been robbed.

First my eye, then the phone book, now my bookshelf had all disappeared. If it had not been that today was Tuesday, I should have been worried. In fact, I was already worried, but Tuesday is my day to ponder all the might-have-beens that had become never-wases. Monday is my day to worry about personal effects (such as eyes and phone books) and Monday would not be back for six days. I was throwing myself off schedule by worrying on a Tuesday. When Monday returned, then I would worry about the phone book, if I didn't have something else of a more pressing nature to worry about first.

(I find that pigeonholing my worrying like that helps me to keep an orderly mind-by allotting only so much time to each problem I am able to keep the world in its proper perspective.) But there was still the matter of the eye and that was upsetting me. Moreover, it was distorting distorting my perspective. my perspective.

I resolved to do something about it immediately. I set out in search of the phone, but somewhere along the way that too had disappeared, so I was forced to abandon that exploration.

It was very frustrating-this distressing habit of disappearing that the inanimate objects had picked up. Every time I started to look for something, I found that it had already vanished, as if daring me to find it. It was like playing hide-and-go-seek, and since I had long ago given up such childish pastimes, I resolved not to encourage them any further and refused to look for them any more. (Let them come to me.) I decided that I would walk to the doctor. (I would have put on my cap, but that would have meant looking for it and I was afraid that it too would have disappeared by the time I found it.) Once outside, I noticed that people were staring at me in a strange way as they pa.s.sed. After a bit, I realized that it must have been my eye. I had forgotten completely about it, not realizing that it might look a bit strange to others.

I started to turn around to go back for my sungla.s.ses, but I knew that if I started to look for them, they too would surely disappear. So I turned around and headed once again for the doctor's.

"Let them come to me," I muttered, thinking of the sungla.s.ses. I must have startled the old lady I was pa.s.sing at the time because she turned to stare at me in a most peculiar manner.

I shoved my hands into my coat pockets and pushed onward. Almost immediately I felt something hard and flat in my left-hand pocket. It was my sungla.s.ses in their case. They had indeed come to me. It was rewarding to see that I was still the master of the inanimate objects in my life.

I took the gla.s.ses out and put them on, only to find that the left lens of the gla.s.ses had faded to a milky white. It matched my eye perfectly, but I found that, unlike my eye, I was quite unable to see through the opaqued lens. I would just have to ignore the stares of pa.s.sersby and proceed directly on to the doctor's office.

After a bit, however, I realized that I did not know where I was going-as I noted earlier, I did not know any doctors. And I most certainly knew that if I started to search for the office of one, I would probably never find it at all. So I stood on the sidewalk and muttered to myself, "Let them come to me."

I must confess that I was a little bit leery of this procedure-remembering what had happened with the sungla.s.ses-but in truth, I had no alternative. When I turned around I saw a sign on the building behind me. It said, "Medical Center." So I went in.

I walked up to the receptionist and I looked at her and she looked at me. She looked me right in the eye (the left one) and said, "Yes, what can we do for you?"

I said, "I would like to see a doctor."

"Certainly," she said. "There goes one down the hall now. If you look quickly, you can catch a glimpse of him. See! There he goes!"

I looked and she was right-there was was a doctor going down the hall. I could see him myself. I knew he was a doctor because he was wearing golf shoes and a sweater; then he disappeared around a bend in the corridor. I turned back to the girl. "That wasn't exactly what I meant," I said. a doctor going down the hall. I could see him myself. I knew he was a doctor because he was wearing golf shoes and a sweater; then he disappeared around a bend in the corridor. I turned back to the girl. "That wasn't exactly what I meant," I said.

"Well, what was it you meant?"

I said, "I would like for a doctor to look at me."

"Oh," she said. "Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

"I thought I did," I said, but very softly.

"No, you didn't," she said. "And speak up. I can hardly hear you." She picked up her microphone and spoke into it, "Dr. Gibbon, puh-lease come to reception..." Then she put down her microphone and looked at me expectantly.

I did not say anything. I waited. After a moment, another man in golf shoes and sweater came out of one of the nearby doors and walked over to us. He looked at the girl behind the desk and she said to him, "This gentleman would like a doctor to look at him."

The doctor took a step back and looked at me. He looked me up and down, then asked me to turn around and he looked at me some more. Then he said, "Okay," and walked back into his office.

I asked, "Is that all?"

She said, "Of course, that's all. That's all you asked for. That will be ten dollars please."

"Wait a minute," I said. "I wanted him to look at my eye."

"Well," she said, "you should have said so in the first place. You know we're very busy here. We haven't got time to keep calling doctors down here to look at just anyone who wanders in. If you had wanted him to look at your eye in particular, you should have said so."

"But I don't want someone to just look at my eye," I said. "I want someone to cure it."

"Why?" she said. "Is there something wrong with it?"

I said, "Can't you see? The pupil has disappeared."

"Oh," she said. "So it has. Did you look for it?"