What Science Fiction has meant to me
or
the specific generalised.
by Dick Jenssen
Preamble
Inherently lazy, I am attracted to actions which produce more than one result, and so have a predilection for puns and double entendres. I mention this because I hope that in what follows, phrases such as "being a science fiction fan" may be replaced by "being gay" without the contextual surrounds being changed. It seems to me, at least in my life, that both aspects of myself share similar features. The substitution of the phrases will not always be applicable, but, then, that is part of the challenge...
Being an SF fan
I am a science fiction fan, as opposed to merely a reader or viewer, because I find great joy in the stories, films, and discussions of this genre. And that pleasure is the result of the interaction between what is read or seen and my personality. In other words, I am a fan simply because it is my nature to be so. It is not an active choice on my part. Indeed, to misquote Theodore Sturgeon very slightly, "Why must we love where the lightning strikes, and not where we choose? But I'm glad it's you, science fiction, I'm glad it's you". But this means I must try to define what my nature is, in respect to SF. And here I will assume that my specific characteristics have, in fact, a wider applicability.
In Edgar Allen Poe's words:From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
from Childhood's Hour
To which we could add Robert Frost's:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
from The Road Not Taken
or even Melville's:
...as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it...since it is well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.
from Moby Dick
Which means that I believe an SF fan is someone who lives slightly askew from those who inhabit the drab everyday world, someone who sees things from a modified perspective. Someone who can perceive the extraordinary in the ordinary, the ultra-mundane in the mundane, and the wonder which resides in the ubiquity of the commonplace. But there's even more to a fan.
Most everyone will respond to the natural beauty of a rainbow, but most, even some scientists, will hold that the scientific explanation of the phenomenon etiolates that beauty to the point of extinction. Most scientists will appreciate the natural beauty and also that of the physics, but will believe that the latter is of another kind, inasmuch as it appeals to the intellect rather than to the senses. The science fiction fan will appreciate both the rainbow and the physical explanation, and will, moreover, see that the two together produce a new beauty more wondrous than either. They will respond to the defining characteristics of SF - to the sense of wonder and to the underlying science, even if that science is, all too often in SF, highly flawed, if not downright incorrect. But it must always be plausible...
Abraham Merritt expressed the combination of beauty of emotion and logic masterfully in The Metal Monster:
In this great crucible of life we call the world - in the vaster one we call the universe - the mysteries lie close packed, uncountable as grains of sand on ocean’s shores. They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces; they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope’s peering eye. They walk beside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking why we are deaf to their crying, blind to their wonder. Sometimes the veil drops from a man's eyes, and he sees - and speaks of his vision.
And this is why that veil-less man comes to write science fiction.
But, and of course, there is more to SF than a sense of wonder...
Two moments of enlightenment - science fiction as liberation
For as long as I can remember, I have been an SF fan. I have always responded to SF in words and images, even though until I was about fifteen, I didn't know that what I liked should be called "Science Fiction". Unfortunately, growing up in Australia in the 1940's and 50's meant that what was available was almost only comics and movie serials, and in turn that meant that SF was inevitably described as "that Buck Rogers stuff" - a description which had intensely derogatory overtones when used by those who spoke from a position of ignorance, bias and prejudice.
But two events, both when I was about eight years old, and both in the same classroom, made me realise just how wrong, how stupid, such a negative view was.
The first was when one of the boys brought a large picture-book of astronomical paintings into class - he had either just returned from America, or had just been sent the book. Now, he was seated on the opposite side of the room to me, and was about forty-five degrees toward the front of the class, but I still could see the book with extreme clarity, and so beheld a view of Saturn from just outside its rings, in breathtaking colour. I mean breathtaking quite literally. I can remember gasping at the beauty of the painting which may, or may not, have been by Chesley Bonestell. Now, I could never have imagined this for myself at the time, because any depiction of Saturn I had encountered was either a bad sketch in a comic, or a poor special effect in a serial, and in black and white. But having seen the painting, I could now not only imagine it, but could visualise variations of it, could change the colours, the viewpoint, add details or hardware - in short, that one painting suddenly opened up a world I never knew, expanded my imagination, and threw off some of the shackles which constrained it.
The other was a reading by our teacher of a story. What the story's title was, or who wrote it, I can not remember (it might even have been a Professor Branestawm yarn by Norman Hunter), but it dealt with a professor who had invented a time machine and who, accompanied by his nephew and niece, had used it to travel back into the Triassic age. Perhaps the teacher was a great reader, perhaps the story was so well told, perhaps it was my thus-stimulated imagination, or a combination of all three, but I saw the dinosaurs, the huge trees, the great ferns, heard the sounds, and moved with the small party of three through a new landscape. Again, I could never have imagined this for myself, but, once exposed to the ideas, could now embellish them.
The joy, the beauty, of these two experiences told me that SF would bring me pleasure, that it would enhance my life, would open me to new experiences, and that this was right, proper and correct. This was perfect enmeshment with my personality. And anyone who sneered at "that Buck Rogers stuff" was not only ignorant, but proud of their ignorance. In short, I never had any trouble with being a science fiction reader, but only with those who thought that I should have trouble.
It's called Science Fiction
Some seven years later, my school friend Race Mathews further enriched my life and influenced it forever by giving me a digest sized magazine, dated October 1950 and which bore on its cover, in blocky letters, the words "Science Fiction". Above these words, and in a different and smaller typeface - which meant it was not as significant - was "Astounding". I read every word and discovered that what I had responded to in the past was called Science Fiction, that this magazine was for adults, that many people took it seriously (the letter column was a mixture of enthusiasm and vaguely comprehensible science), and that there were ideas in the stories which made me think. And think deeply. SF was not only wonder, a goad to the imagination, but it also offered intellectual pleasures.
Race also let me know that the school library had a copy of Groff Conklin's The Best of Science Fiction (the first hard cover anthology of SF ever published), and told me where I could buy a copy of Healy & McComas's Adventures in Time and Space (the second hard cover anthology, and still one of the best ever).
Many of the stories - those which involved time travel paradoxes - forced me to think very hard indeed in order to resolve the seeming inconsistencies. They forced me to apply logic and rigour when I thought about the stories - they made me exercise not only my imagination but my intellect. Such as it was. Other stories had a mathematical bent - how to imagine a fourth space dimension, how a one-sided. one-edged, surface could exist...
The early Melbourne Science Fiction Club
Race was fifteen at this time, very mature, of a strong personality, and possessed of what appeared to be unlimited energy - which he still has. So it was not surprising that he discovered other SF fans in Melbourne, and arranged meetings where we all could get together - I was included because of the accident of knowing Race. Initially, we met in each others' houses, but the group soon grew so large that less confined spaces had to be found. The first meeting place was a coffee lounge called Val's in Swanston Street between Little Collins and Bourke Streets.
Leaving home one night, I said goodnight to my Mother, who had a guest for dinner, told her that I was off for the SF meeting, and that I'd be back late. "Where are you going ?", I was asked by the guest, and when I responded "Val's", was cautioned with - "You be careful, Dick, a lot of queens go there". "Right !", I said, and left, not having the vaguest idea of what a queen was. Now if it seems odd, and unbelievable, that a sixteen year old boy was ignorant of queens, you must realise that in the early 1950's in Australia, sex was something which was never openly discussed (except in medical or scientific circles), but merely sniggered over by adolescents or guffawed at in dirty jokes told by the blokes in the pubs. Anything even remotely sexual, or which to the censors (of which there were many) was suggestive, was eliminated from films and radio, or banned outright in books. I seem to remember that even some of Tolstoy was therefore banned.
To my eyes, the other patrons of Val's seemed not in the least strange, and, perhaps unfortunately, I met with no adventures which might have enlarged, so to speak, my experiential horizons. But someone in the SF group must have recommended Val's - though I never discovered who. A pity - I have always been fond of racy gossip.
It was at a Val's meeting that we decided to call ourselves a Club, but without any formal rules or brief, or office-bearers - and so, again simply by the serendipitous fact of being in the right place at the right time, I found myself a founding member of the Club.
They're not (such) a weird mob
SF, I have said, brought me wonder, goaded and stimulated both my imagination and intellectual capabilities, and introduced me to new scientific and mathematical concepts - all the while entertaining me royally. Even though - if I listened to those who weren't "dreamers" and who didn't need such "escapism" - what I read was supposedly barely literate. Though it was J. R. R. Tolkien who pointed out that the people most frightened of escape are the jailers of this world - those who believe in the power and necessity of shackles. Dreamers, say the warders, are also those who live in ivory towers, quite forgetting the fact that from the top of such a tower one can see further and much more clearly than can the grunting hogs at its base who eye only the mire and ordure through which they snuffle their lives away.
The members of the Club seemed to be neither illiterate nor intellectually challenged. They had imagination (which is necessary for dreams) and they questioned the world around them (because the view from the tower exposed more to their intellect). They may have viewed the universe aslant, but they seemed to me to be freer because of it.
An example. At the age of seventeen I was probably even more obnoxious than I am now - being possessed of ideas which I knew were right and unassailable - and unstoppable in my desire to give others the benefit of my knowledge. And so I was expounding to a friend on the virtues of Progress. Democracy was the pinnacle of government, Christianity was the summit of religion (and the Church Of England was perched above all others on the peak), humanity was the noblest creature ever to inhabit the earth, the British Empire (though it had slipped to a Commonwealth) was the most benevolent power ever to have been, and...the list goes on. All of this was due, so I said, because of Progress.
"Ah, Dick", said my friend Rod, "I think you should read Bury's book The Idea of Progress". Which shut me up, but left my jaw hanging. I knew of J. B. Bury, an historian whom I had read, and the thought that such a respected authority could write a book on the idea of Progress, when everyone knew it was a fact, was, to me, unimaginable. But I respected Rod, and so I read the book.
It changed my life. My life, and likely no one else's, because it came at the right time, and addressed my very personal prejudices. Bury showed convincingly and unequivocally that Progress - which was now in my mind just the lower case progress - was an idea whose form had fluctuated with time and differing civilizations. But if were so (the implication was so forceful that I could not avoid it), then I had been lied to by my parents, by my teachers, by my priests, by my government, by all in authority. They had conspired - even if they were not in conscious collusion - to fill my mind with propaganda, bias and prejudice. It was they who were the jailers, who put shackles on me, who manacled my mind with insidious, invisible chains, and who may never have realised what they were doing because they themselves were so bound and constricted.
And so, after the book, I had replaced my enthusiasm for the Fact of Progress by the idea of progress. Just as obnoxious as ever, when I next saw Rod I was desperate to disgorge my half-digested appraisals.
"Rod, thank you so much for suggesting Bury's book - we really must discuss it..."
But Rod merely laughed, and said: "I haven't read it, Dick - I just thought you should".
Which encapsulates SF and the SF fans for me - both are purveyors of subversion.
SF as subversion
The ideas which the fans at the club threw around were sometimes half-baked, downright wrong, or on the fringe of sanity, but most were not, most gave one pause, and made one think, perhaps, as in the anecdote above, about the hidden assumptions we all live by. Science fiction itself has this subversive quality, which is one possible reason why the fans, those passionate about the genre, are attracted to it.
In the early 1950's, a new writer, Phillip Jose Farmer, burst into prominence with a novella The Lovers which appeared in Startling Stories. The plot was simple - an Earthman on a far distant planet has fallen in love with a girl, native to the planet. They live together, cohabit, and she becomes pregnant. But since she is not human, the pregnancy has unforeseen consequences, which, not to spoil the story, won't be revealed here. The novella was a romance and a study of passion and its aftermath - it seemed at the time, to express the growing new maturity of SF, moving away from crashing planets, bug-eyed monsters and other dimensions towards an exploration of character and emotion.
But if one thought about The Lovers for a moment, there was a very subversive subtext. It was, it is true, about love and passion and sexuality, but the sex was between a human and another species. She was human in appearance, but was no closer to us than a vicuna, or a sheep, or a chicken. In short, the novella was about bestiality. And it was accepted, and praised, at a time when many countries of the world, and some states in the US prescribed the death penalty for such an activity. (In fact, some countries still do, as I suspect is the case in Texas). The story presented aspects of bestiality in a positive light - it was a disguised plea for tolerance. Now perhaps this was not Farmer's intent, but the subtext is there, and many readers, I feel certain, will pick up on it subconsciously.
In the 1950's there were many books and stories dealing with homosexual characters (the specialised word "gay" didn't exist in Australia then), but very few had happy homos, and even fewer had happy resolutions. Even such positive novels as Quatrefoil by Stephen Barr ended in death, and the only novel I can think of in which the gay pair survive, just as happy as when the story began, was The Heart in Exile by Rodney Garland. The same bias held in short stories. Writers such as Graham Greene and John O'Hara wrote intensely homophobic stories, which were approvingly published. Exceptions were E. M. Forster (whose stories remained unpublished until after his death) and Tennessee Williams (in The Mysteries of the Joy Rio). So it was again subversive of SF to publish a gay-themed, and positive, story by Theodore Sturgeon The World Well Lost (in Universe Science Fiction, June '53). Remember this was at a time when, in Australia, one could go to jail simply for being gay - as a friend of mine discovered.
For those who read between the lines, or perhaps indulge in wish-fulfillment, there were gay characters in SF, but not overtly so. Some of my favorite stories are the Ransom and McTate stories by Homer Nearing Jr. which appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction, again in the early 50's, and most of which were loosely joined together into the "novel" The Sinister Researches of C. P. Ransom. The two main characters, Cleanth Penn Ransom of the Mathematics Department and Archibald McTate of Philosophy seem to behave like a happily married couple, engaging, every so often, in rather arch banter. Even if I am wrong and making false imputations, the stories are too good to miss. But I find a certain sensibility in lines like ...the Dean's wife sat down behind her bosom... and ...the congregation surged forward in a babble of eschatological cries... and ...the owner of the voice, harsh with virginal acrimony, loomed behind it... and ...befetished nymphophobe and chastitute...
A choice of career
If SF had done no more than affect my life as I have just sketchily outlined, it would have been a powerful shaper of my days and thoughts. But it helped mould my career. It seems likely that I would have chosen Science in any event, but the decision was inevitable given the pleasure SF had bestowed on me. And with the heavy emphasis in SF at that time on the mathematical sciences, I had to major in Physics.
Very early in my vocation as a science fiction fan, I had read F. G. Rayer's novel Tomorrow Sometimes Comes - a book which was to have a great influence on me. Not for the prose, since, at sixteen, I could not distinguish good from bad, nor Vargo Statten from John Wyndham, but for the ideas and the depiction of an invention which was to change the world, though few realised it at the time. The plot combined many disparate themes, Armageddon, the Sleeper awakes, the Redemption and restitution of the world, and Time travel. What brought these together was that the destroyer who unleashes Armageddon, is the Sleeper who wakes, who then becomes the Saviour of the world by becoming the Time traveller.
When Rawson, the Sleeper, regains consciousness in the future world for which he is responsible, he discovers that pockets of organized life exist in scattered villages and small cities. Rawson finds his way to one of these, and learns it is dominated by a computer. This is the Mens Magna (which sounds so much more intimidating than Giant Brain), occupying a huge building - probably larger than a city block - and which controls all aspects of the city, and the inhabitants' lives. It is also waging a war against the "barbarian" hordes outside the gates. The Mens is capable of conducting many hundreds (if not thousands) of interviews at once, while simultaneously running all other control programs, repairing itself, and adjusting and amending its own programs. It communicates by keyboard, visual screens, and voice - both understanding human speech, and responding vocally. It is massively redundant with many "control units". All newcomers to the city must be interviewed by the Mens which attempts to elicit hidden information by asking what are apparently disconnected questions in the nature of non sequiturs. The computer is thus self-programming, self-aware, multi-tasking, redundant, and communicates in a highly sophisticated manner, and seems possessed of intelligence.
If the above description sounds familiar, that may be because the Alpha 60 computer in Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Alphaville shared all these traits. Rayer was not, of course, credited.
The novel was written in 1951, when probably there were less than half-a-dozen electronic digital computers in existence, none of which had any of the capabilities which Rayer had envisaged, so this was mind-expanding stuff...
Five years later I had just completed my B.Sc, and was so in love with the academic life that the thought of facing the whole wide, cruel, world was terrifying. But my third year results were so spotty and inconsistent - honours and bare passes - and my experimental abilities so non-existent (I think I must have been one of the very few who ever failed Practical Work), that a Master's in Physics was out of the question. But - as so often has happened in my life - luck stepped in, and a friend of mine in the third year class told me that Meteorology was looking for a Master's candidate. Which seemed about as interesting as the physics and chemistry of doughnuts, but I went to see them anyway. Again, the fickle finger waved approvingly and I found that the research topic was The Barotropic Model - a simplified set of equations governing the behaviour of the atmosphere and which allowed a prediction to be made of the weather using an electronic digital computer. Australian scientists at CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - later to become CSIRO) had built what I believe is the world's third computer which had its programs, and data, stored internally in its memory. CSIRAC, as the computer was acronymed, had just been installed within the Physics Department.
So the planned M.Sc project was going to be, as far as I was concerned, like living an SF story. Resistance was futile, even if it had crossed my mind. Were it not for SF and Rayer, (and a very scrappy undergraduate record, and the desperation of the Meteorology Department) I would have had a very different professional career. I would have missed out a job which, for the most part, was enjoyable and rewarding, and I would never have known just how much I liked teaching. Programming and lecturing slowly usurped the place SF had occupied in my life, a place to which I only returned after my retirement, and then not nearly as passionately as in the early years.
It all still works
To summarise then: when I came to SF it was because it exposed the wonder of both the constituents of the universe and the constituents of the intellect; it promoted and fed the imagination and the ideas; it fostered a critical appraisal of societal mores and conventions; and it was subversive. Nothing has changed. Stephen Baxter's Titan gives us technological and hard SF for most of its length, and then suddenly shifts into Stapledonian wonder for its glorious ending.
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Envoi
Now in the crepuscular years of my life, as the rainbow bridge and Valhalla loom ever larger, I can review the influence of SF and thank it for making my existence as pleasurable as it has been.
And thank you in the audience for listening to me.
Ditmar
| Editorial Note: Dick 'Ditmar' Jenssen presented this as the Guest of Honour Speech at Spaced Out's 'Outer Space Day' on 19 October 2002. We are indebted to Dick for allowing us to reprint this fine speech. - Editors. |
Comix Strip
by Miriam
February 2002 brought publication of an unusual Amazing Spiderman. As is happening more often these days, that comic was written by a renowned author -- in this case J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame. This issue of Spiderman, an action comic if ever there was one, had absolutely no action! It was all talk. The dialogue was rivetting, as you would expect from such a brilliant writer. It was all about Peter (Spiderman) Parker "coming out" to his Aunt May.What qualifies it for special notice here is Aunt May's reaction and her mistake. Everybody knows she accepts and loves her nephew. She reveals here that she had been thinking he might be gay. There is much more to this story than just this single point though. Reading some of this issue gave me goosebumps. I heartily recommend it if you can get ahold of it. You might try a comix specialty shop like Alternate Worlds.